· Private foundation
20th Century Electric Railway Foundation
Its FY2020 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2020.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2020
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $100k
- $250k+1 grant · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PENNSYLVANIA TROLLEY MUSEUM | $500,000 |
| NEW ENGLAND ELECTRIC RAILWAY HIST S | $50,000 |
| SEASHORE TROLLEY MUSEUM | $50,000 |
| MINNESOTA STREETCAR MUSEUM | $30,000 |
| CONNECTICUT TROLLEY MUSEUM | $25,000 |
| SAN DIEGO ELECTRIC RAILWAY ASSN INC | $5,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–20) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 81% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +56% since the first grant, against -39% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2020, 4 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2020, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $80k went to new ones.
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- NONORTHERN OHIO RAILWAY MUSEUM2× · 2017–2018 · $231k · revenue +352%
- OPOLD PUEBLO TROLLEY2× · 2018–2019 · $101k · revenue +197%
- MSMINNESOTA STREETCAR MUSEUM3× · 2017–2020 · $65k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- IRILLINOIS RAILWAY MUSEUM INCone grant, 2018 · $250k · revenue +21%
- FCFORT COLLINS RAILWAY MUSEUMone grant, 2019 · $80k
- RTROCKHILL TROLLEY MUSEUMone grant, 2019 · $35k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Provide a museum of local railroads
The Museums mission is the collection, preservation,restoration and operation of vintage railroad equipment at its own facility and on the historic SD&A Railway for the education.
Educate the public on the operations of a railroad and its equipment.
Motor Transport Museum collects and preserves trucks, vehicles, machinery and parts for viewing by the general public.
Acquisition preservation and Restoration of Railroad Artifacts Showing the History of Arizona
Electric City Trolley Museum Association is a non-profit, tax exempt membership organization dedicated to the preservation, restoration and interpretation of the social and economic developmental role of Electric Railways. As an all…
Encouragement of the interest in railway history, the preservation of railway artifacts and equipment, documents and records, and to enable members to study railroad operations.
Maintaining the Lake Shore Railway Museum and all exhibits
To encourage the collection & preservation of historical material associated with the Western MD Railway and American Railway system.
We are a trolley museum. we provide an historically accurate educational experience of the trolley era through interpretation, preservation, restoration and operation of an electric railway.
The mission of the organization is to preserve and communicate to the general public the historical experience of long island's rail transportation history through means of historic artifacts and buildings, either in working or static…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Pennsylvania Trolley Museum Inc and the most unlike its peers is Old Pueblo Trolley. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 9 of the 20 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA TROLLEY MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS RAILWAY MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN OHIO RAILWAY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds OLD PUEBLO TROLLEY ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA STREETCAR MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds RAILWAYS TO YESTERDAY INC ↗
- Who funds BALTIMORE STEETCAR MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds BRANFORD ELECTRIC RAILWAY ASSOC INC ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO ELECTRIC RAILWAY ASSOCIATION dba NATIONAL CITY DEPOT ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization 20th Century Electric Railway Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Branford Electric Railway Assoc Inc — 7% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to 20th Century Electric Railway Foundation?
Find your warmest path to 20th Century Electric Railway Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.