Foundation endowments lean on ESG ratings built largely on corporate self-reporting
Foundation endowments sold as responsible investments rely on ESG ratings that take most of their human rights data from the companies themselves, write Benjamin Claeson and Mathieu Vervynckt of Swedwatch in Alliance Magazine. A 2025 OECD analysis of eight major ratings providers found that over 80 percent of human rights metrics came from corporate self-disclosure. Global philanthropy may hold as much as 2.4 trillion dollars in assets.
The screens guarding these endowments come from for-profit providers such as MSCI, Sustainalytics and S&P Global. One estimate puts their ratings market at 12.7 billion dollars in 2026, growing to 18.9 billion dollars by 2031. Meanwhile, the human rights groups that supply independent evidence have lost 40 percent of their budgets since 2024. Abuses that nobody records drop out of the data, and company scores rise.
Source: Alliance Magazine · October 28, 2026