· Private foundation
Allen Family Philanthropies
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k12 grants · $35k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $416k
- $50k–250k23 grants · $3.6M
- $250k+63 grants · $54M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ARTSFUND | $10,422,623 |
| REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SAN DIEGO | $2,500,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION | $2,500,000 |
| ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI | $2,500,000 |
| CHILDRENS HOSPITAL CORPORATION | $2,500,000 |
| NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY | $1,763,533 |
| FRIENDS OF SEATTLE WATERFRONT | $1,518,612 |
| FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC | $1,435,763 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,276,100 |
| AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION INC | $1,250,000 |
| SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION | $1,042,500 |
| SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION | $1,042,500 |
| ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC | $1,000,000 |
| CHANCELLOR MASTERS & SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD | $800,000 |
| EARTH GENOME | $763,083 |
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.
Your US giving — 89% of grant dollars ($359M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 11% that went abroad ($43M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $668k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 75% of those 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
Beyond the US — 11% of all-years giving ($43M)
17 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 20% of Allen Family Philanthropies’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 36% of the giving stays in WA; read by stated purpose it is 29% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +44% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
154 repeat relationships — 62 still active in FY2024, 92 since wound down; 29 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11M 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $37M · revenue +46%
- AARTSFUND5× · 2020–2024 · $21M · revenue +5% · 64% of their budget
- AHAmerican Heart Association Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $20M · revenue +33%
Funded once
- LCLIVING COMPUTER MUSEUM LABone grant, 2018 · $2.1M
- FHFLYING HERITAGE & COMBAT ARMOR MUSEUMone grant, 2018 · $1.8M · revenue -100%
- FCFresnos Chaffee Zoo Corporationone grant, 2023 · $1.2M · revenue -27%
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 an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
We conduct fundamental infectious disease research to generate critical new knowledge about pathogens and their interactions with see schedule o for continuationhumans to enable the discovery and development of novel interventions,…
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The aquarium of the pacific's mission is to instill a sense of wonder, respect, and stewardship for the pacific ocean, its inhabitants, and ecosystems.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Fsc i&p promotes environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests. this mission aligns with the forest stewardship council (fsc), its network of offices, and other organizations.…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wild Salmon Center and the most unlike its peers is Heroes Homestead. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 33 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.5% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
180 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. 180 of the 310 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MERCY HOUSING NORTHWEST ↗
- Who funds ARTSFUND ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Corporation ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Tufts College ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE ROYAL FOUNDATION OF THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES ↗
- Who funds ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAI ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN RIVERS INC ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRED HUTCHINSON CANCER RESEARCH CENTER ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PUGET SOUND RESTORATION FUND ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Salk Institute for Biological Studies ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds FLYING HERITAGE & COMBAT ARMOR MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds MOTE MARINE LABORATORY INC ↗
- Who funds The Pride Foundation ↗
- Who funds PHILANTHROPY NORTHWEST ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
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: Seattle Foundation · The Norcliffe Foundation · Moccasin Lake Foundation · Grousemont Foundation · United Way of King County · The Satterberg Foundation Inc · Artsfund · Gates Foundation · Puget Sound Energy Foundation · School's Out Washington · Raikes Foundation · Seattle Seahawks Charitable 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 Allen Family Philanthropies 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Bonneville Environmental Foundation — 100% of income from government
- Wild Salmon Center — 49% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- The Broad Institute Inc — 19% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Reach Out and Read Inc — 9% of income from government
- Institute for Advanced Study - Louis Bamberger & Mrs Felix Fuld Foundation — 7% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Mote Marine Laboratory Inc — 4% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- Oregon Shakespeare Festival Association Inc — 0% of income from government
- The Florida Aquarium Inc — 0% 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 Allen Family Philanthropies?
Find your warmest path to Allen Family Philanthropies 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.