Skip to content
Plinth

Plinth

An analyst’s read on any funder or nonprofit.

Name any organization and see how it actually gives — or who actually backs it. Free, from public filings.

Filter
If you raise money
Free
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
then
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.

Profile your nonprofit
then
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

The US funding graph, as filed

Every grantmaking foundation that e-files, and the nonprofits it funds, plus 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.

211,000
grantmakers
19.8 million
grants traced
$1,167 billion
in grants to US nonprofits
426,000
nonprofits funded

Figures are read from public IRS filings, which lag roughly 12–24 months, and are dated to their fiscal year, covering FY2017–2026. The span ends at FY2023 because that is the newest fiscal year whose filings have substantially arrived; later years are already loading and are shown as partial until they fill in. 15.1 million of the 19.8million grant lines are resolved to a named recipient organization; the rest carry a recipient name we would not stake an EIN on, so they count in the totals but appear on no recipient’s funding page. 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. Measured match rates for every layer are on the data-quality page. How we know this.

What’s public, and what’s yours

Everything on this site is built from public filings. It tells you what has already happened — to any foundation, to any nonprofit, without asking anyone’s permission.

Public

What has happened.

The record, assembled and read back to you: who gave, who received, who kept giving, and what became of the organizations on the other end.

  • Any funder or nonprofit in the US
  • Read from public 990 filings, 12–24 months behind
  • Free, no account, every figure traceable to its source

Plinth

What happens next.

The same discipline pointed at the grants you are making now — applications, diligence, decisions and the years of reporting that follow.

  • Your applicants and your own grants
  • Due diligence, sanctions screening, post-award monitoring
  • Eligibility routing, governance checks, board reporting
See Plinth

The grant graph and every funder and nonprofit page stay free either way.

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.

Hover a state to see how much of its grantmaking stays at home.

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 itemized in an e-filed 990, from ~211,000 US funders. Ask in plain English — it writes its own SQL, shows you the query it ran, and traces every figure back to the filing.

Open the chat →

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 land in the regranting layer: organizations that both receive grants and make them.$9.7BThe DAF merry-go-roundis granted by donor-advised funds to other donor-advised funds, rather than to working charities.+0.44The camps of US philanthropyfunders cluster by geography, not size or ideology: national donor-advised-fund blocs, 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 — 19.8 million of them, across 211,000 funders — behind a free, public API. Query the whole universe yourself.

Worked examples

What a dossier actually shows

Real sections from live dossiers, grounded in 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

What is Plinth?
Plinth is a US nonprofit and foundation intelligence database built from public IRS Form 990 and 990-PF filings: about 211,000 grantmakers — every US filer that itemized a grant — and 19.8 million grants, resolved into a multi-year funding network. It shows who funds any nonprofit, every foundation's grantees, which funders co-fund the same organizations and which portfolios resemble each other, and it is available through a public grants API.
How much do US foundations give in grants?
Across the IRS filings tracked here (fiscal years 2017–2023), US grantmakers reported $1,167 billion in grants to roughly 426,000 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 211,000 organizations filed grantmaking returns in the period covered here: every electronically-filed Form 990, 990-EZ, and 990-PF, together making around 19.8 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 rather than a licensed directory. The data is free to search and free to query via the API. See the methodology for how each figure is built.
Is every grant matched to a recipient organization?
No. 15.1 million of the 19.8 million grant lines are resolved to a specific recipient EIN. Foundations file recipient names as free text, and an identification is attached only when the evidence clears a measured precision bar, so the remaining lines count in totals without appearing on any recipient's funding page. In practice a smaller nonprofit's page can be missing funders whose filings name it ambiguously: treat a funding page as a floor, not a census. Per-layer match rates, including the weak layers, are published on the data-quality page.
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), so a nonprofit's page shows its philanthropic and government funding together. How each is linked differs and it matters: state portals often publish an EIN, which is a direct join, but USASpending identifies recipients by federal UEI rather than EIN, so federal awards are matched by a confidence-scored name-and-location resolution. We favor precision over recall there: an award is left off rather than attached to the wrong organization, so federal coverage is partial by design, and state coverage is limited to the handful of states whose checkbooks publish usable recipient data today. Treat the government total on a nonprofit's page as a floor, not a full account; measured resolution rates for both layers are on the data-quality page.
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.