Transamerica Institute

Grant seekers should understand upfront that Transamerica Institute is not a conventional grantmaking foundation — it is a private operating foundation (IRS foundation code 03) that conducts its own research programs rather than funding external organizations. Its Form 990 filings from fiscal years 2012 through 2024 show $0 in grants paid to outside organizations in every single year, even as total giving/program spending ranged from roughly $536,000 (FY2012) to over $1.2 million (FY2019), all of which was consumed by the Institute's own research, publications, and outreach — not by third-party grants. The organization's 2024 program breakdown makes this explicit: $369,583 on retirement-security research and educational content, $195,948 on public outreach about saving and retirement, $79,684 on health-insurance and workplace-wellness research, and $302,733 on public health-coverage outreach. In other words, every dollar funds the Institute's own studies (the Annual Retirement Survey dates to 1998), reports, podcasts, and the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies (TCRS). CEO/President Catherine Collinson leads a governance board of roughly 10-14 directors, several drawn from Transamerica's corporate leadership (Sean Cassidy, Phil Eckman, Kent Callahan), alongside a small executive team (VP Christopher Conrad, Secretary Steven D. Weinberg, Treasurer Katie Helgens). None of the officers or directors draw compensation from the Institute per its filings. Nonprofits, academic researchers, and aging/retirement-focused organizations should not submit unsolicited grant applications here — none will be reviewed, because no such intake exists. The productive path is research partnership: the Institute has co-published work with MIT AgeLab and regularly cites academic collaborators, and it actively seeks media and thought-leadership channels for its findings. Organizations wanting Transamerica corporate funding for programs should instead approach the separate, sister entity, Transamerica Foundation (formerly Aegon Transamerica Foundation), which is a distinct 990 filer with an active community-grants program and invested over $9 million in 2025.

There are no external grant dollar amounts to analyze because Transamerica Institute made $0 in grants to other organizations across every fiscal year in the available filing history (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024) — the DB's grantee list and matched-grants data are both empty by construction, not by data gap. What the financials do show is a private operating foundation whose scale has shrunk on a total-giving (self-program-spend) basis: total giving/program expense peaked at $1,209,114 in FY2019, then declined for four straight years to $1,020,293 (FY2021), $912,835 (FY2022), and $857,443 (FY2023) — a roughly 29% pullback in the Institute's own program spending over that span. Total assets are thin and volatile for an operating foundation of this profile: $77,053 (FY2015) up to $222,701 (FY2019), then a sharp jump to $5,036,562 reported for FY2024 (versus $174,918 in FY2023) — a 28x single-year increase in reported assets that likely reflects a capital infusion, balance-sheet reclassification, or timing artifact in the FY2024 filing rather than organic growth, and is worth independent verification against the full Form 990 rather than assumed at face value. FY2024 total revenue was $5,705,912, also a steep jump from the $535,766-$1.2M range seen in every prior year on file — consistent with a one-time contribution or restructuring rather than a new program pattern. Historically, contributions received have tracked total revenue almost dollar-for-dollar (e.g., $904,302 received against $904,302 revenue in FY2023), indicating the Institute is fully donor/parent-funded with negligible investment income — net investment income is reported as $0 in every year with usable data, unusual for an organization holding several hundred thousand dollars in assets, suggesting funds are held in low-yield or restricted instruments pending program use rather than invested for return. There is no program-area or geographic breakdown to report by grant dollars, since 100% of spend is self-directed research and public education rather than pass-through grants.

Transamerica Institute's IRS peer set (organizations with roughly $5M in assets under the Education NTEE category, per the platform's automated matching) is a poor functional comparison because those peers are small family/scholarship funds, not national research operating foundations — a mismatch worth flagging rather than papering over. A more useful comparison set pairs Transamerica Institute against its own sister entity and similarly structured corporate-affiliated research/philanthropy operations:

The automated Education-category peers are asset-matched but not mission-matched — they are small, likely closely-held family foundations, while Transamerica Institute is a national corporate-affiliated research operation with no third-party grant channel at all. The only genuinely useful "peer" here is Transamerica Foundation itself: a same-parent-company entity that actually funds outside organizations at roughly 10x Transamerica Institute's total program budget, and is the correct redirect target for any grant seeker who lands on Transamerica Institute by mistake.

Transamerica Institute's 2025-2026 activity has been entirely research and public-education output, consistent with its operating-foundation structure — there is no grant-cycle news to report because none exists. In October 2025, the Institute released joint findings with MIT AgeLab on the financial behaviors, confidence, and literacy of middle-income Americans, continuing its pattern of academic co-research. Its Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies (TCRS) arm published an April 2026 report finding that retirement planning remains a stated priority for U.S. workers but that higher everyday costs are eroding momentum toward saving goals, and a March 2026 survey of retirement-plan decision-makers at 100+ colleges and universities found many institutions modernizing retirement benefits. Also in March 2026, six Transamerica-affiliated plan sponsor clients won P&I Eddy Awards for participant education and communications — a corporate/practitioner recognition adjacent to, but distinct from, Institute research. CEO and President Catherine Collinson (who has led the organization across all filing years reviewed, with no CEO turnover evident in the data) was named an Influencer in Aging by PBS Next in early 2026, reflecting sustained public visibility for the Institute's longevity and retirement research. Separately and importantly, the affiliated Transamerica Foundation announced in December 2025 that it invested more than $9 million in community programs in 2025, including examples like a $25,000 smart-home-technology grant to Penn-Mar Human Services and a $100,000 grant to the North Point-Edgemere Volunteer Fire Department — none of which flow through Transamerica Institute. Grant seekers should track Transamerica Foundation's news channel, not Transamerica Institute's, for funding-relevant developments.

There is no application process to optimize for Transamerica Institute as a funder, because it does not accept or review grant applications — its own website has no grants, funding, or apply page, and its 990 filings confirm zero dollars have gone to outside organizations in every year of available data (2012-2024). Do not submit an LOI or proposal here; it will not reach a grant review function because none exists. If a search engine, database, or referral led you to Transamerica Institute looking for funding, the corrected target is Transamerica Foundation (transamerica.com/about-us/foundation-grant), a separate legal entity under the same corporate parent (Aegon/Transamerica) that runs an active community-grants program (over $9 million disbursed in 2025) with its own eligibility rules, focus areas (basic needs, health, financial literacy, community development, arts access, inclusion, workforce development), and application portal — verify current deadlines and eligibility directly on that page before applying, since specifics were not fully retrievable during this research pass. If your organization's actual goal is research collaboration, media placement, or thought-leadership visibility rather than funding, Transamerica Institute is worth cultivating differently: its published work leans heavily on academic and research-institute co-authorship (its MIT AgeLab partnership on middle-income financial behavior is the clearest recent example), so the productive approach is proposing a joint research project, data-sharing arrangement, or co-branded survey to the Institute's research team rather than a funding ask. Position any outreach around the Institute's active research verticals — retirement security, caregiving, workplace age-inclusion (its AIMS initiative), healthy longevity, and the health/financial-well-being intersection — since these are where its 2025-2026 publication output has concentrated. Outreach to CEO Catherine Collinson or the research team is more likely to land as a co-research pitch than a funding request; frame it explicitly as advancing the Institute's public-education mission (it self-describes as producing content "for educational purposes only"), not as seeking a grant. Given the volatility in the FY2024 financials (assets jumping from $174,918 to over $5 million and revenue jumping to $5.7 million versus a prior range under $1.3 million), it would be reasonable for a sophisticated partner to ask directly whether this signals any strategic shift — including a possible future move into external grantmaking — before assuming the status quo holds indefinitely.