The assets table shows what a donor owns: public stock backed by SEC filings, private-company stakes, real estate, and investment vehicles like LLCs and trusts. This article explains where each number comes from and how far to trust it.
The assets table shows what a donor owns — public stock, stakes in private companies, real estate, and more. In this article, we'll go through each asset type: where the data comes from, and what it means for an ask.
Assets sit right below income in the Net Worth section. The walk below opens there — take a look, then read on for each asset type:
Assets are what a donor already owns; income is the money they earn each year. Income has its own article — this one covers what a donor owns.
The assets table covers public stock, private-company stakes, investment property, and a catch-all Other, plus Personal Property rows for homes tied to an address — each with an estimated value range. Investment vehicles like family LLCs and trusts get their own section below the table. Let's take them one at a time.
Public-equity holdings are the most precise asset data we have. The reason is a disclosure rule: if your donor is an insider of a public company — an officer (CEO, CFO, other top executives), a director (board member), or anyone who owns more than 10% of the stock — securities law requires them to report exactly what they own and every trade they make. So their share count isn't an estimate. It's on the record.
Two filings do the work. Form 3 is the starting snapshot — filed once when someone first becomes an insider (at an IPO, every officer and director files one), listing everything they own that day. Form 4 is the running log — filed within two business days every time they buy, sell, or exercise options. Start from the Form 3 snapshot, apply every Form 4 change, and you can rebuild what a donor holds today, which is exactly what DonorAtlas does. They appear on a profile as the small badges and document cards you see in the walkthrough above.
The stock chart plots the value of the donor's stake, not the raw share price: for each date, it multiplies the shares they held that day (rebuilt from the Form 3 and Form 4 record) by that day's closing price. So a dip isn't always a price move — when the donor sells shares, the line steps down even if the price holds. Hover anywhere to see the price, the share count, and the stake's value on that day.
A share count is only half the math; the other half is the price per share. Above the chart, the profile shows the price used to value the stake and the date it was captured. When the company trades normally, that's the live market price. When there's no live quote, a gray badge names what we fell back to:
Check the "as of" date before quoting a number. A stake valued at last week's market close is current; one anchored to a Form 4 sale from over a year ago could have moved a lot since.
Private companies have no ticker and no daily price — nobody quotes what a share is worth between deals. The only real price signals are funding rounds (the price investors actually paid, which implies a value for the whole company) and comparisons to similar companies. Both are approximations, so DonorAtlas shows private stakes as honest ranges rather than fake-precise numbers.
The stake is two estimates multiplied together: the company's valuation, and the person's ownership percentage after dilution (every funding round issues new shares, shrinking an early holder's percentage). The ownership-slice bar in the walk shows this for an early angel stake: a $250K check, diluted to 0.5–1.5% over two rounds, is now worth $1–3M on paper against a ~$200M Series-B valuation. "On paper" is the operative phrase — it can't be spent until the company is sold or goes public.
When a private stake turns into cash — an acquisition or an IPO — it shows up as a Realized row in the income table. If a donor's private company just exited, watch the income side for timing.
Real estate shows up on a profile in two distinct ways, and they mean different things. A Real Estate row in the assets table is a stake in a real-estate business: a developer, an owner-operator (a firm that owns and runs buildings), or a syndicator (one that pools investor money into deals). The value shown is the person's share of the portfolio's NAV — what the buildings are worth minus the mortgages on them and minus other investors' share.
A Property row is the donor's own deeded home — a specific address pulled from county property records. Those records tell us three things: the deed (who legally owns it — sometimes a trust or LLC rather than the person), the mortgage (how much was borrowed, and when), and the assessed value. DonorAtlas combines these with market data to show an estimated value and, where mortgage history allows, the owner's equity — value minus what's still owed. Expand any Property row in the assets table in the walkthrough above to see the equity and mortgage-progress bars.
A home deeded to a family trust or an LLC still counts — the ownership badge on the row shows how confident we are that the property is the donor's.
Past a certain point, wealthy families stop holding everything in personal accounts and set up dedicated entities to manage it. A family office is a private firm that runs one family's money. A family LLC holds investments or property for family members. A personal trust is a legal arrangement where a trustee holds assets for named beneficiaries. People use these for estate planning, liability protection, and privacy — not to hide money, but the structure does mean the wealth won't show up under the person's own name.
DonorAtlas surfaces these as Investment Vehicles, in their own section below the assets table (you can see one in the walkthrough). The headline number is an estimated AUM: roughly how much the vehicle holds, with the person's share of the wrapper listed alongside. A vehicle is a wrapper, not a separate fortune — anything inside it that we can identify (a stock position, a property) appears on its own row too, so don't add the numbers together.
Gifts may come from the entity. When a family manages its wealth through an LLC or a trust, large gifts often come from the entity rather than the person. A vehicle on a profile also tells you the family's wealth is structured and advisor-managed.
Anything valuable that doesn't fit the types above lands in Other — royalties, collections, or a fund partner's personal money invested alongside their own funds (a "GP commitment"). Each row carries a short description and the same estimated value range; expand it to read what the asset actually is.
Everything above comes together in the Non-Cash Assets table on the donor profile — the same one in the walkthrough. Rows are sorted by value, largest first, and each shows the asset type, the entity, and the estimated value range. Click any row to expand it — inside are the Key Takeaway, that asset's charts and filings, and the source links behind every estimate.
Every value is a range on purpose: a tight range means hard evidence like SEC share counts, and a wide one means we're estimating. For how assets and income roll up into the net-worth figure at the top of the profile, see How DonorAtlas estimates wealth.
And to see all of this in action, take the guided wealth walkthrough next — it opens every income and asset row on a real profile, one step at a time!