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TIAA Kaspick
TIAA Kaspick manages planned-giving vehicles for 180+ nonprofits, operating inside TIAA's institutional business since 1989.
TIAA Kaspick
John Kaspick founded the firm that bears his name in 1989 to serve nonprofit institutions managing split-interest gifts, charitable remainder trusts, and pooled income funds. The firm grew into the dominant planned-giving back-office for major US universities and charities, managing over $13 billion on behalf of roughly 180 institutional clients at the time of its 2006 acquisition by TIAA. TIAA folded the operation into its wealth-management and institutional-services divisions, rebranding it TIAA Kaspick and maintaining its Boston headquarters alongside an office in Menlo Park, California. The firm operates as an outsourced planned-giving investment manager and administrator. Its core mandate covers charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, charitable gift annuities, and pooled income funds — specialized vehicles where the donor or nonprofit retains a split interest in the assets. TIAA Kaspick handles the full lifecycle: accepting complex non-cash gifts, managing trust investments within TIAA's broader asset-management platform, calculating distributions to income beneficiaries, and ultimately transferring remainder assets to the named charitable institution. Confirmed nonprofit clients include major research universities and national health organizations. TIAA Kaspick's scale is opaque. TIAA does not separately disclose the unit's current assets under management, though the firm's planned-giving specialization makes it one of the largest dedicated managers in the niche. Kathleen Kelly leads the business as Managing Director. The acquisition embedded planned-giving capabilities directly into TIAA's institutional sales motion, allowing the parent to cross-sell retirement-plan and endowment services to the same university finance offices that use Kaspick for gift administration. In recent years, TIAA has broadened Kaspick's mandate to include donor-advised fund administration and other charitable-vehicle management, reflecting consolidation in the outsourced philanthropic-services industry. The structural differentiator is the embedded distribution channel. TIAA Kaspick does not compete for nonprofits as a standalone trust company; it lives inside a retirement-and-insurance conglomerate that already services over 15,000 institutions. A university treasurer using TIAA for retirement plans encounters Kaspick as a bundled option for managing complex gifts, a cross-sell advantage no standalone planned-giving firm can replicate. The model converts planned-giving from a niche trust service into a line item within the parent company's multi-product institutional relationship — making the firm difficult to displace and equally difficult to benchmark against independent peers.
General information
Firm type
Asset Manager
Year founded
1989
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Boston
Corporate office
Boston, MA, United States
Additional offices
Menlo Park, CA
Principals
John Kaspick
Founder
Kathleen Kelly
Managing Director
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at TIAA Kaspick?
TIAA Kaspick manages planned-giving assets through TIAA's broader institutional investment platform rather than operating a separate investment committee. The firm's Managing Director, Kathleen Kelly, oversees client relationships and trust administration, while asset allocation and manager selection are executed within TIAA's centralized investment management structure. This means Kaspick clients access the same investment capabilities as TIAA's retirement and endowment accounts.
How is TIAA Kaspick related to the larger TIAA organization?
TIAA acquired Kaspick & Company in 2006 and integrated it as a wholly-owned subsidiary operating under the TIAA Kaspick brand. The unit reports through TIAA's institutional services division and benefits from TIAA's balance sheet, distribution relationships, and investment platform. It remains legally distinct for trust-administration purposes but is not an independent fiduciary — ultimate governance runs through TIAA's corporate structure in New York.
What types of charitable vehicles does TIAA Kaspick manage?
The firm specializes in split-interest gifts: charitable remainder trusts, charitable lead trusts, charitable gift annuities, and pooled income funds. More recently, TIAA Kaspick has expanded into donor-advised fund administration. These vehicles serve donors who want to transfer assets charity while retaining an income stream, and the nonprofit clients that ultimately receive the remaining principal.
Does TIAA Kaspick work directly with individual donors, or only with nonprofits?
TIAA Kaspick primarily contracts with nonprofit institutions, which engage the firm as an outsourced administrator for their planned-giving programs. Individual donors interact with the nonprofit's development office, not directly with Kaspick. The firm handles back-office trust accounting, tax reporting, investment management, and beneficiary distributions — but the relationship and gift solicitation remain with the charity.
What differentiates TIAA Kaspick from a typical trust company?
The firm's embedded position within TIAA gives it a distribution advantage that independent trust companies lack. TIAA already serves over 15,000 institutional clients for retirement plans; Kaspick's planned-giving services are cross-sold to the same finance and development offices. No standalone planned-giving manager can match that institutional footprint. The trade-off is that Kaspick clients are tied to TIAA's investment platform, limiting open-architecture flexibility relative to independent trust providers.
Where does the underlying wealth come from?
TIAA Kaspick does not serve a single family or wealth creator. Its assets come from charitable gifts made by thousands of individual donors to approximately 180 nonprofit institutions — universities, hospitals, and foundations — that use Kaspick as their planned-giving administrator. The wealth origin is diffuse, typically high-net-worth donors over age 65 structuring charitable remainder trusts or gift annuities as part of estate planning.
Does TIAA Kaspick maintain philanthropic structures, and how are they separated?
The firm itself is the philanthropic structure — it exists solely to administer charitable vehicles. Donor assets are segregated by trust and by charitable beneficiary, with TIAA Kaspick acting as trustee or co-trustee for each vehicle. The parent company, TIAA, operates as a not-for-profit insurance company, though various subsidiaries including Kaspick operate in taxable and tax-exempt capacities depending on the vehicle structure.
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