Did Tel Aviv University get $581 million from American taxpayers? No, that's not true: The school received less than $6 million in U.S. government funds, an official website shows. A nonprofit data expert told Lead Stories that most of the money reported in the school's tax return under "Contributions and grants" is "likely Israeli government funding."
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on February 6, 2025. The post's caption said:
Tel Aviv University received $581 million in taxpayer dollars and spent $441 million on salaries and employee benefits.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Fri Feb 7 18:38:04 2025 UTC)
This post did not provide any credible evidence to support its assertion. It only provided a partial screenshot of IRS Form 990 filed by the school.
Lead Stories found the full tax document (archived here) on the Cause IQ website, which provides data on the nonprofit sector to major firms and nonprofits. The $581 million figure falls on line 8 of Part I of Form 990 (page 1) and tallies "Contributions and grants." The breakdown of those funds appears in Part VIII (page 9), which shows that $379 million comes from "Government grants." The rest of the money is from nongovernment sources.
The $379 million in government grants detailed in the tax form aren't necessarily from the U.S. government. It's all government entities. The IRS (archived here) defines it this way:
Enter the total amount of contributions in the form of grants or similar payments from local, state, or federal government sources, as well as foreign governments. Include grant amounts from U.S. territories.
USAspending.gov
The U.S. government tracks its spending on the USAspending.gov website, where anyone can look it up. Lead Stories checked the site for Tel Aviv University and the time period of October 1, 2022, to September 30, 2023. It showed the school received less than $6 million in government grants (archived here) -- only about 1 percent of what the social media post claimed.
Josh Hurd, founder of Cause IQ, told Lead Stories in a February 7, 2025, email that he found nothing that showed Tel Aviv University received $581 million from American government coffers:
So while Tel Aviv University does receive funding from the U.S. federal government, there is a large difference between what we've been able to confirm from USASpending.gov, versus the amount in that field. While the difference hypothetically could be U.S. state and local funding, it likely is Israeli government funding. So taxpayer dollars, yes. But exactly which country's taxpayers is harder to tell.
Lead Stories contacted Tel Aviv University for comment and will update this story accordingly.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims regarding taxpayer spending can be found here.
