As a lifelong New York Knicks fan, I watched last month’s run to the franchise’s first NBA championship in 53 years with a mix of disbelief and joy. But the more I sat with it, the more I became convinced that the title traces back to a single decision by a single player — and that it is a decision with a great deal to say to those of us who work in and around foundations.
In 2024, Jalen Brunson signed a four-year contract extension worth roughly $156 million. Had he waited twelve months and reached free agency, he could have commanded something near $269 million. He left $113 million on the table — not for a charity, but for his own team’s salary cap.
Under the NBA’s “second apron,” every dollar a star claims for himself is a dollar his organization cannot spend building the roster around him. By taking less than his maximum, Brunson gave the Knicks’ front office the flexibility to absorb Karl-Anthony Towns, trade for Mikal Bridges, and re-sign OG Anunoby. The championship core existed because its best player declined to be its highest-paid.
Two seasons ago, this looked like a blunder. Last month, it looked like the whole ballgame. And I keep thinking about what it would mean for foundations to internalize the same logic.
On Trust
Start with the payout rate. Private foundations operate under their own version of a salary cap: the federal requirement to distribute roughly 5% of assets each year. That requirement was written as a floor — the minimum a foundation must pay out to justify its tax advantages. Yet much of the sector has spent decades treating it as a ceiling. The endowment is protected in perpetuity; the mission gets the leftovers.
Brunson looked at his maximum and chose, deliberately, to go under it so the larger enterprise could win. The equivalent move for a foundation is to look at its minimum and choose, deliberately, to go over it — to treat 5% as the least it can do rather than the most, and to free real resources into the field while those resources still matter.
The parallel runs deeper than payout, though, and this is where CEP’s own research comes in. Consider what kind of money Brunson gave up. He didn’t earmark his sacrifice for a specific bench player or dictate how the front office spent the savings. He created room and trusted the organization to use it. That is the closest thing professional sports has to multiyear general operating support — and it is exactly the funding nonprofits receive least of.
CEP’s “New Attitudes, Old Practices” found a sobering disconnect between what foundation leaders say they believe about multiyear general operating support and what their institutions actually provide; in the decade before the pandemic, only about one in five grant dollars was unrestricted, and barely more than one in ten grants was both multiyear and unrestricted.
Foundation CEOs, in other words, are the conventional-wisdom general managers of Brunson’s story: they agree flexibility wins championships, and then they hand their grantees a smaller budget and a binding list of which players to sign. Brunson’s discount worked because it was flexible. The lesson translates with almost no friction: trust the operators, fund the whole roster, and stop confusing control with strategy.
On the Kind of Legacy That Matters
There is also the matter of ego, which philanthropy and professional sports share more than either likes to admit. The conventional (ego-driven) wisdom held that a superstar maximizes his contract because the number is the legacy. Brunson bet the opposite — and his restraint has made him more of a legend in New York, not less.
Compare that to a sector that still often measures generosity in naming rights, in buildings and atriums and endowed chairs. The most durable legacy Brunson built has his name on no wall. It’s a banner that belongs to the whole franchise. It is worth asking which version of legacy proves more impactful: the one built on visibility and permanence, or the one Brunson chose.
On Risk and Ambition
But here is the part of the story I would most want a nervous foundation board to hear: Brunson protected himself. This was not martyrdom. By structuring a shorter deal, he kept a player option and positioned himself for a future extension that could approach $417 million. He made sure, as he put it, that his family was taken care of first. He gave up enormous money and safeguarded his own future, and those two facts coexisted without contradiction.
That is the version of the argument boards can actually act on. The sector’s resistance to spending more, to loosening restrictions, to taking real risk almost always hides behind the language of prudence and permanence — the fear that generosity and durability are opposites. Brunson’s deal is a refutation of that false dichotomy. Similarly, a foundation can free up extraordinary resources for the field and still secure its own standing. Restraint and self-preservation are not enemies of ambition; they are what make ambition sustainable.
None of this is to pretend the lesson is simple. Brunson took a genuine gamble; for most of two years the consensus was that he had thrown nine figures away for nothing. His discount only paid off because the Knicks spent it well — a star’s sacrifice is worthless next to an organization that squanders the room it creates.
The philanthropic translation is not “spend down recklessly” or “give until it hurts.” It is something more demanding: align your institution’s interests with the success of the system you claim to serve, then trust the people doing the work to deliver. That means grantee feedback taken seriously, restrictions loosened, time horizons lengthened — the very practices CEP has spent two decades helping funders measure.
Brunson made his bet when no banner was guaranteed. He left the money on the table and let the front office cash it. The sector that controls hundreds of billions in mission-bound capital, much of it waiting “in perpetuity” while the problems it exists to solve accelerate, would be well-served to sit with the question Brunson’s championship-enabling decision forces: what, exactly, are we maximizing — and for whom?
Brian Byrd is the founder of BiBYRD Consulting. He has previously worked at both private foundations and nonprofit organizations, including The Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Health Foundation, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
