· Private foundation
Alison Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $660k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST JOHN'S COLLEGE | $845,045 |
| AGASSIZ VILLAGE | $260,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $200,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER | $200,000 |
| ROPER ST FRANCIS FOUNDATION | $200,000 |
| CHARLESTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $60,000 |
| GEORGE EASTMAN MUSEUM | $19,550 |
| CHAMBER MUSIC CHARLESTON | $7,000 |
| TOUCHSTONE DISCUSSION PROJECT | $500 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 33% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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 +25% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 0 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $201k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
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
- SJST JOHN'S COLLEGE9× · 2017–2025 · $8.3M · revenue +8%
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER8× · 2018–2025 · $1.9M · revenue +65%- RSRoper St Francis Foundation3× · 2023–2025 · $600k · revenue +25%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERISTY OF ROCHESTER SIMON SCHOOL OF BUSINESSone grant, 2017 · $250k
- RPROCHESTER PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA INCone grant, 2017 · $40k · revenue +15%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $3k
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.
Manhattan school of music is deeply committed to excellence in education, performance, and creative activity; to the humanity of the school's environment; and to the cultural enrichment of the larger community. a premiere international…
The mission of the princeton symphony orchestra is to leverage the power of live music to uplift the human experience.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The Roanoke Symphony Orchestra provides a professional symphony orchestra of artistic excellence and integrity to enrich lives, to educate, and to entertain diverse audiences in western Virginia with the highest quality instrumental and…
The mission of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is to foster and maintain an organization dedicated to making music consonant with the highest aspirations of the musical art, creating performances and providing educational and training…
Fairleigh dickinson university is a center of academic excellence dedicated to the preparation of world citizens through global education. the university strives to provide students with the multi-disciplinary, intercultural, and ethical…
Dickinson college provides a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship
Endicott college offers students a vibrant academic environment that remains true to its founding principle of integrating professional and liberal arts with experiential learning. for more information see schedule o.
Cosmic symphony nurtures the performance of high quality orchestral music, showcasing southern maryland talent.
The mission of the annapolis symphony orchestra is to inspire, educate and enrich lives near and far by creating extraordinary musical experiences with uncompromising artistic excellence.
The orchestra is dedicated to bringing orchestral music of the highest caliber to south florida. its mission is to delight, inspire and educate the communities we serve through music.
The mission of music conservatory of westchester is to provide the extraordinary benefits of music to all in our community. we believe in the inherent power of music to provide personal enrichment, creative expression, lifelong learning,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra Inc and the most unlike its peers is Touchstones Discussion Project Inc. 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, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 9 of the 12 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 ST JOHN'S COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER ↗
- Who funds Roper St Francis Foundation ↗
- Who funds GEORGE EASTMAN MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds AGASSIZ VILLAGE FOUNDED BY MR & MRS HARRY E BURROUGHS ↗
- Who funds CHARLESTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds ROCHESTER PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds CHAMBER MUSIC CHARLESTON ↗
- Who funds Touchstones Discussion Project Inc ↗
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: The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 Alison 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.
- St John's College — 2% 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 Alison Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Alison 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.