Elon Musk’s charitable foundation grew larger than ever in 2024. But, for the fourth year in a row, the huge charity failed to give away the minimum amount required by law — and the donations it did make went largely to charities closely tied to Mr. Musk himself.
Those details were disclosed in the Musk Foundation’s tax filing for 2024, which the group released to The New York Times upon request.
The foundation is now one of the largest in the country, with more than $14 billion in assets. But unlike some other billionaires who have dedicated their nonprofits to broader social or political causes, Mr. Musk in recent years used his nonprofit in ways that narrowly track the interests of his for-profit businesses.
In 2024, the tax filings show, that trend continued. The Musk Foundation gave away $474 million in 2024, more than it has in any prior year. But more than three-quarters of that, $370 million, went to a nonprofit in Texas led by Mr. Musk’s top aide. That nonprofit appears to provide a benefit to Mr. Musk’s business empire: It operates an elementary school in a rural area where many of his employees live, near a cluster of Mr. Musk’s companies.
The foundation also gave $35 million to a philanthropic fund that is still effectively under Mr. Musk’s influence.
A higher proportion of the Musk Foundation’s gifts in 2024 went to those closely connected charities than in any year since 2020, according to an analysis by The Times of Mr. Musk’s tax filings.
The details of the Musk Foundation’s giving last year were reported earlier by Bloomberg. Representatives of Mr. Musk and his foundation did not respond to questions about its giving.
Mr. Musk is the world’s richest man. In a podcast interview released this week, he said he had struggled to give away money effectively.
“The biggest challenge I find with my foundation is trying to give money away in a way that is truly beneficial to people,” he told his interviewer, Nikhil Kamath. “It’s very easy to give money away to get the appearance of goodness. It is very difficult to give money away for the reality of goodness.”
In the same interview, Mr. Musk said, “I have a large foundation, but I don’t put my name on it.” Mr. Musk’s charitable foundation has been called the Musk Foundation since he founded it with his younger brother, Kimbal, in 2001.
Mr. Musk has cumulatively given the Musk Foundation about 18 million shares of Tesla stock, which could have provided him with significant tax deductions. As Tesla shares rose, the Musk Foundation grew to be the 10th-largest charitable foundation in the country by 2023, according to a Times analysis. (Not all foundations have reported their 2024 figures.)
But, while almost all other foundations with billions in assets built large teams to guide their giving, Mr. Musk has chosen not to. In 2024, the officers of the Tesla chief’s foundation were just three unpaid volunteers — himself, the head of his family office and another family-office aide who works on the foundation for just six minutes per week on average, tax filings show.
And unlike Mr. Musk’s peers, who often invest in marketing activities commensurate with the size of their philanthropies, Mr. Musk maintains a bare-bones, plain-text website for his philanthropy that has not been updated in years.
In 2024, as in 2023, the largest recipient of its donations was “The Foundation,” the nonprofit that operates the elementary school near Mr. Musk’s businesses in Bastrop, Texas. The nonprofit says it also wants to open a high school and, eventually, a university. The Musk Foundation has now given that nonprofit about $607 million since 2022.
In addition, the Musk Foundation gave $35 million last year to an intermediary, called a donor-advised fund, managed by the financial giant Fidelity. But while that money in these vehicles is intended to eventually go to other nonprofits, philanthropists maintain some advisory oversight of the assets. Mr. Musk’s foundation said in the tax documents that its leaders retained influence over the Fidelity assets.
Beyond those gifts to connected charities, the Musk Foundation gave to several nonprofits in South Texas, where Mr. Musk’s company SpaceX has a large complex for building and launching rockets. The Musk Foundation began giving to community causes there after a rocket explosion in March 2021.
The foundation also gave to causes in Austin, where Mr. Musk lives, and gave $5 million to the Windward School in Los Angeles, which his son graduated from in May 2024. Mr. Musk also made donations to several Jewish entities during a calendar year when he sought to discard with accusations of harboring or supporting antisemitism.
By law, private foundations like Mr. Musk’s are required to give away 5 percent of their assets every year. If they fail to meet that standard, they must give away the remainder during the next year, or pay a penalty to the Internal Revenue Service. Mr. Musk’s foundation failed to meet the minimum in 2021, 2022 and 2023. At the start of 2024, the foundation had to give away $421 million left over from 2023.
The Musk Foundation gave away that remainder in 2024, largely by shifting money to the other nonprofits in his orbit. But it still fell $393 million short of the minimum required giving for 2024 itself. This pattern can repeat indefinitely: Mr. Musk’s foundation now has until the end of 2025 to give away the donations it failed to give in 2024.
Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting.
Theodore Schleifer is a Times reporter covering billionaires and their impact on the world.
The post Elon Musk’s Foundation Grows to $14 Billion, but Gives Little to Outsiders appeared first on New York Times.
