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Plinth

Dig deeper into any funder or nonprofit.

See who it funds, its co-funder network, and how its priorities have shifted. Raising money? See the funders already backing organizations like yours.

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Where you stand

Your funding, by place, cause and network.

Detroit Phoenix CenterDetroit, MI
  • Geographic · youth orgs in Detroitwell-backed
  • Thematic · youth orgs nationallyunder-funded
  • Funder network · orgs sharing your backerstypical
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Who you're missing

The funders each lens reveals.

Your place, your cause, and your funder network each surface a different set of funders you don’t have — free, no account.

  • Geographic+4 funders
  • Thematic+9 funders
  • Funder network+6 funders

3 appear on all three — your strongest targets.

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Where it goes next

Your next chapter.

The organizations your peers back that you don’t — and the gaps in your portfolio worth filling next.

Profile your foundation

Three reads a search can’t return

01

Behavioral reads, not lists

Who a funder backs first, who leans on it, whether it held the line in a downturn — character synthesized across the whole graph. Others rank who matches whom; we read how a funder behaves.

02

What the grant bought

We follow the money past the check — into each grantee’s own filings, websites and federal funding — to read what a grant actually produced, not just that it was made.

03

Context matched to the cause

The right external need data joined to each funder’s actual cause — eviction pressure for a housing funder, health gaps for a clinic backer — so context reads expert, not templated.

The US funding graph, in full

Every grantmaking foundation and the nonprofits it funds — and the federal and state government dollars those nonprofits also receive — read from public IRS Form 990/990-PF filings, USASpending, and state checkbooks. It also traces grants to overseas NGOs, universities and government bodies that have no US EIN.

205,000
grantmaking foundations
17.9 million
grants traced
$884 billion
in grants to US nonprofits
392,000
nonprofits funded

Figures are read from public IRS filings, which lag roughly 12–24 months, and are dated to their fiscal year, covering FY2017–2025. The dollar and nonprofit-count totals are recipient-side — they count only grants that land on a US nonprofit we can match to an EIN, so they read lower than the developer API, which sums every grant (including those to individuals, government bodies and overseas entities) and counts every named recipient. How we know this.

Explore

By place and by cause

How local is the money

Each state shaded by the share of its grant dollars that stays in-state. Darker keeps more at home. Pick a state.

leaves the statestays homeAll states →

Where the money goes

US grant dollars by cause, sized by area. Pick a cause to see its largest funders and recipients.

New · AI analysis

Ask the entire US grant universe a question

Every grant from ~205,000 US funders, drawn from public IRS filings. Ask in plain English and get a straight answer with the chart to match, every figure traced back to the filing.

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Reports

What the whole funding graph shows

Findings that need every funder, not a directory. Read from US IRS filings, using the most recent years with complete coverage — charity filings lag 12 to 24 months, so the latest years are still arriving.

51%The regranting layerof US grant dollars pass through a donor-advised fund, community foundation or fiscal sponsor before reaching a charity.$9.7BThe DAF merry-go-roundis granted by donor-advised funds to other donor-advised funds, rather than to working charities.Strange bedfellowsWho funds across the dividethe named clusters of US funding, progressive advocacy to the conservative movement, and the orgs a divided set of funders all converge on.+0.44The camps of US philanthropyfunders cluster by geography, not size or ideology: one national donor-advised-fund bloc, and regional rings around community foundations.66%The year after a grantof US grant relationships continue into the next year, and over half are still funded three years on.Free APIThe Grants APIevery US grant — 17.9 million of them, across 205,000 funders — behind a free, public API. Query the whole universe yourself.

Worked examples

What a dossier actually shows

Real sections from live dossiers — every figure built from the foundation's own IRS filings. The same components render on each full report.

useplinth.com · The Skillman Foundation / Galaxy map

The Skillman Foundation · Detroit, MI

Every comparable nonprofit placed by what it says it does — a Vertex embedding of its mission, projected to 2-D. Color shows which ones this funder backed.

About this data

How much do US foundations give in grants?
Across the IRS filings tracked here (fiscal years 2017–2025), US grantmakers reported $884 billion in grants to roughly 392,000 nonprofits. The figures come from Form 990 and 990-PF filings, which the IRS releases on a 12–24 month lag, so each is dated to its fiscal year.
How many grantmaking foundations are there in the US?
About 205,000 organizations filed grantmaking returns in the period covered here — every electronically-filed Form 990, 990-EZ, and 990-PF — together making around 17.9 million grants.
Where does this data come from, and is it free?
It is read from public IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file filings and the IRS Business Master File — primary government data, not a licensed directory — and the data is free to search and free to query via the API. See the methodology for how each figure is built.
Does this include government funding, not just philanthropy?
Yes. Alongside foundation grants, we track federal government funding (grants and contracts, from USASpending) and state government grants (from state transparency checkbooks), matched to each nonprofit by EIN — so a nonprofit's page shows its philanthropic and government funding together.
Does it cover foreign or non-charity recipients?
Yes. The funding graph includes overseas NGOs, universities and government bodies that receive grants but have no US EIN, plus international grant flows — see the international funding and entity pages.