· Public charity
American Academy of Optometry Foundation Inc
To develop and provide financial support for optometric research and education.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 72% of AMERICAN ACADEMY OF OPTOMETRY FOUNDATION INC’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 25 grants below total $224,750 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $751,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $526,250 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $156k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $69k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM | $25,000 |
| INDIANA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF OPTOMETRY | $12,500 |
| SUNY STATE COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY NEW YORK | $11,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY SCHOOL OF OPTOMETRY | $10,000 |
| THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY | $9,500 |
| ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY | $9,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PIKEVILLE | $9,000 |
| NEW ENGLAND COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY | $8,250 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA - BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL OF OPTOMETRY | $8,000 |
| MARSHALL B KETCHUM UNIVERSITY | $8,000 |
| NOVA SOUTHEASTERN COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY | $8,000 |
| PACIFIC UNIVERSITY - COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY | $8,000 |
| MICHIGAN COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY | $8,000 |
| SOUTHERN COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY | $8,000 |
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 (FY18–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 71% 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
Grants abroad, by region — $76k on the FY2025 return
Schedule F, as filed: 4 regions, $11k to organizations and $65k to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: FELLOWSHIP AWARD · FELLOWSHIP AWARDS
Stated purpose: FELLOWSHIP AWARDS
Stated purpose: FELLOWSHIP AWARDS
Stated purpose: FELLOWSHIP AWARDS
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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.
24 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- TNTHE NEW ENGLAND COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY8× · 2018–2025 · $261k · revenue +32%
- MUMidwestern University8× · 2018–2025 · $73k · revenue +20%
- UOUniversity of the Incarnate Word7× · 2018–2025 · $71k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- UHUNIVERSITY HOSPITALS HEALTH SYSTEM INCone grant, 2020 · $60k
- TMTUFTS MEDICAL CENTER PARENT INCone grant, 2019 · $25k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARKone grant, 2024 · $10k
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.
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
The mission of southern california university of health sciences (scu) is to educate students as competent, caring and successful practitioners of integrative healthcare. the university is committed to providing excellence in academics,…
The central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…
A.T. Still University of Health Sciences serves as a learning-centered university dedicated to preparing highly competent professionals through innovative academic programs. The University is committed to continuing its osteopathic…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Education, research, medical services and other public services.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
We educate the next generation of leaders to improve the health of our society.
Seton hall university is a catholic institution of higher education
Samuel merritt university educates students to become highly skilled and compassionate health care professionals who positively transform the experience of care in diverse communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Midwestern University and the most unlike its peers is Foundation for Education and Research in Vision Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 29 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 THE NEW ENGLAND COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY ↗
- Who funds Midwestern University ↗
- Who funds University of the Incarnate Word ↗
- Who funds Nova Southeastern University Inc ↗
- Who funds Illinois College of Optometry ↗
- Who funds Southern College of Optometry ↗
- Who funds MARSHALL B KETCHUM UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WESTERN UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds SALUS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MCPHS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds INTER AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF PIKEVILLE ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATION AND RESEARCH IN VISION INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds UNTHSC FOUNDATION ↗
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: Marco Family Foundation Inc · The Alcon Foundation Inc · American Heart Association Inc · Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry · American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy · Michael & Susan Dell Foundation · Cvs Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 American Academy of Optometry Foundation Inc 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.
- Pacific University — 2% of income from government
- The New England College of Optometry — 2% of income from government
- Nova Southeastern University Inc — 2% of income from government
- Mcphs University — 1% 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 American Academy of Optometry Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to American Academy of Optometry Foundation Inc 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.