· Private foundation
American Express Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1424 grants · $170k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $387k
- $50k–250k31 grants · $3.8M
- $250k+26 grants · $19M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMON PURPOSE CHARITABLE TRUST | $3,446,817 |
| AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC | $1,925,000 |
| AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC | $1,825,000 |
| AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC | $1,450,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE INC | $1,000,000 |
| AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC | $800,000 |
| OCEAN CONSERVANCY INC | $785,000 |
| AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS | $750,000 |
| UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND INC | $665,000 |
| JA WORLDWIDE INC | $597,425 |
| HISPANIC FEDERATION INC | $500,000 |
| COVENANT HOUSE | $500,000 |
| UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF | $450,000 |
| GENERATION - YOU EMPLOYED INC | $450,000 |
| VALLEY OF THE SUN UNITED WAY | $400,000 |
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.
Your US giving — 88% of grant dollars ($99M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 12% that went abroad ($13M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY20–24, $6.5M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% 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 — 12% of all-years giving ($13M)
7 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 10% of American Express Foundation’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.
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 +33% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
1721 repeat relationships — 908 still active in FY2024, 813 since wound down; 17 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, 61% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5.5M 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
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches5× · 2020–2024 · $4.9M · revenue +38%
- IRInternational Rescue Committee INC5× · 2020–2024 · $3.6M · revenue +63%
UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF5× · 2020–2024 · $3.0M · revenue +46%
Funded once
- KBKing Baudouin Foundation United States Inc (4680one grant, 2020 · $872k
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF MAGEN DAVID ADOM (514794)one grant, 2023 · $750k
- MUMYRIAD USA INC (468028)one grant, 2023 · $625k
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.
See schedule ouniversity of new haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts & professional education.
We work to realize human rights and end poverty in africa, asia, latin america and the caribbean.
Offer a challenging education that develops the qualities of mind, spirit and body for students.
To advance the rights and opportunities of children and youth worldwide.
A higher educational institution, providing both undergraduate and graduate degrees.
Founded 131 years ago, the boston architectural college is a recognized institution providing excellence in practice-integrated design education to members of diverse communities with students representing 35 countries. the bac offers…
To advance professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power.
Pathfinder builds lasting and trusted local partnerships to strengthen health systems, forging resilient pathways to sexual and reproductive health and rights for all.
Allosource responsibly processes and distributes human donated tissue that enhances and saves lives.
Opening doors to success in a constantly changing world
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
Deliver world-class resources and mentoring to enable every entrepreneur across the globe to realize their maximum potential.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New York Foundling and the most unlike its peers is Pittsburgh Botanic Garden. 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 32 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1.0% 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.
1622 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. 1622 of the 2,000 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 AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds AMERICA'S CHARITIES ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds MYRIAD USA INC ↗
- Who funds SCHOLARSHIP AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds CHC CREATING HEALTHIER COMMUNITIES ↗
- Who funds FIRST NATIONS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds OCEAN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Big Brothers Big Sisters Of America ↗
- Who funds Global Impact ↗
- Who funds JA WORLDWIDE INC ↗
- Who funds GENERATION YOU EMPLOYED 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: Thunderbirds Charities · John F Long Foundation Inc · Virginia G Piper Charitable Trust · Phoenix Suns Charities Inc · The Diane and Bruce Halle Foundation · Executive Council Charities · The Foundation for Community and Health Advancement · BHHS Legacy Foundation · Valley of the Sun United Way · Fiesta Events Inc · Kennecott Utah Copper Visitors Center Charitable Foundation · The Board of Visitors
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 Express 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- United Way of Broward County Inc — 27% of income from government
- Big Brothers Big Sisters of America — 21% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Feeding South Florida Inc — 5% of income from government
- Maven Leadership Collective — 3% of income from government
- Volunteer Florida Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project 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 American Express Foundation?
Find your warmest path to American Express 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.