What Part IX-B of a 990-PF tells you
What is Part IX-B on Form 990-PF?
It is the section where a private foundation reports its program-related investments: money it put out as a loan, a loan guarantee or an equity stake in service of its mission, and not as a grant. The form asks it to describe its two largest by name and amount, then total the rest on line 3. Reading it tells you two things a grant list will not. First, whether this foundation is willing to move money as something other than a gift, which matters if what you need is capital, not program funding. Second, that it is rare: across the full index of 122,390 private foundations, 1,543 reported anything in Part IX-B on their most recent filing.
Last reviewed 8 August 2026.
How to read it
- Lines 1 and 2 are the two largest, described
- Named, with an amount, and with whether the foundation still held the investment at year end. This is the most specific thing in the whole return about what a foundation is willing to do outside its grant program, and it is written in prose, not in a code.
- Line 3 is everything else, as one number
- All other program-related investments, combined. A foundation with a real program here usually has a schedule attached, and the schedule is where the detail is.
- It has to reconcile
- The total of lines 1 to 3 must equal line 1b of Part XI. If it does not, something in the return is wrong, and that is worth noticing before you rely on any figure in it.
- It is one filing year, not a policy
- This is the single most misread thing about the section. A foundation with an empty Part IX-B this year may have made three of these investments last year. A foundation with an entry this year may never make another. It records what happened, not what they do.
What is actually in it, across every filing
1,543 foundations out of 122,390 reported a program-related investment on their latest return. That is about one in eighty. Narrow it to the ones that also accept applications and it is 262 organizations nationally.
The amounts are smaller than the concept suggests. Half of those 1,543 reported under $8,153 for the year. Across all of them the total was around $390 million, so nearly all of the money sits with a handful of very large filers and the median foundation here is not writing a company a meaningful check.
Both halves matter. The total makes this look like a market. The median tells you which foundations in it are worth your week.
From a scan of Part IX-B across the full 122,390-EIN index on 8 August 2026, including foundations that accept no unsolicited applications. Elements matching ProgramRelated or PrgrmRltd elsewhere on the form were counted too; schema-emitted zeros and NONE entries were not.
Who should care about this box
Companies. A program-related investment is one of the few routes by which foundation money legitimately reaches a for-profit. If you have been told foundations are closed to you, this is the door that is not quite shut.
Anyone who needs capital, not a program. A building, a piece of equipment, a revolving fund, working capital against a contract. Those are awkward asks for a grant and natural ones here.
Anyone competing for a crowded grant. Far fewer organizations ask for one of these than ask for a grant, and a foundation with an entry in this box has already shown it will consider the structure.
Who asks this most
The answer above is the same whoever you are. What Quillify does about it is not.
Related
- Foundation money and for-profit companiesCan a for-profit business receive money from a private foundation?
- Reading a foundation's tax returnWhat can I learn from a foundation's 990-PF?
- When the right answer is not a grantWhat is a CDFI, and when should I look at a loan instead of a grant?
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