The Permanent Endowment Foundation was founded and received its tax-exempt status as a donor advised 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization in 2019. The primary purpose of the foundation is to provide productive individuals access to an easy-to-use platform to manage their charitable giving in a way that maximizes the long term outcomes of the gifts their donor advised accounts provide to charities that support value systems that are important to donors, to their families and to society.
Great Recession losses of 501 (c) 3 non-profit organizations’ endowment funds demonstrated an inability of these charities to manage risk. Gifts from donors were lost and not used to maximize the endowment of the values that the gifts were intended to support. These losses of endowment funds discouraged future gifts from many existing donors. This was particularly damaging to small colleges and other un-endowed non-profit organizations. Findings of the Permanent Endowment Research Project were used to develop a system of charitable gift allocation that created a guaranteed outcome of perpetually multiplying, inter-generational endowment funding for 501 (c) 3 non-profit organizations that made it possible to permanently endow participating 501 (c) 3 non-profit organizations. That system is the Permanent Endowment Program.
Permanent Endowment Program pilot projects have been established at a number of 501 (c) (3) non-profit organizations by the research project. Productive individuals and affluent individuals participating in other related personal financial planning research projects funded pilot project Permanent Endowment Programs at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Concordia University (Irvine), University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Brigham Young University, Idaho State University, and Virginia Commonwealth University-Medical College of Virginia. In addition, productive individuals who were participants in the Economics of Life and Doctors Economic Research Projects also funded global pilot project Permanent Endowment Programs for church related schools in Russia, and for medical clinics in the Philippines, in India, and in other parts of the world.