· Public charity
American Public Gardens Association
We champion and advance public gardens as leaders, advocates, andinnovators in the conservation and appreciation of plants.
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.
The 6 grants below total $136,969 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $242,926 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $105,957 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $6k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $131k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL TROPICAL BOTANIC GARDEN | $30,969 |
| GARDENS OF GOLDEN GATE PARK | $25,000 |
| BOTANICAL GARDEN OF THE PIDMONT | $25,000 |
| TREES ATLANTA | $25,000 |
| MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN | $25,000 |
| ATLANTA BOTANICAL GARDEN | $6,000 |
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 human-services grants (FY22–23, $39k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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
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 +31% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 3 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, 41% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $81k 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
- QBQUEENS BOTANICAL GARDEN SOCIETY INC3× · 2021–2023 · $105k · revenue +49%
- TPTHE PENNSYLVANIA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY3× · 2021–2023 · $105k · revenue +37%
- MLMINNESOTA LANDSCAPE ARBORETUM FOUNDATION3× · 2021–2023 · $105k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- GPGARFIELD PARK CONSERVATORY ALLIANCEone grant, 2023 · $69k · revenue +13%
- FOFriends of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardensone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue -34%
- OGOLIVEWOODS GARDENS & LEARNING CENTER INCone grant, 2023 · $20k · revenue +1%
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.
Mission: to inspire and educate through nature.vision: we envision our public garden as a nationally acclaimed attraction for residents and visitors alike. its cultural, social and educational activities will draw attendees to enjoy,…
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
Mission - we connect people to plants by inspiring communities to explore and conserve nature.our commitments - organizational sustainability, environmental resiliency, collaboration and gathering, social responsibilityour vision - we are…
The mission of san diego botanic garden: we garden to create, share, and apply plant wisdom in our world. the organization's diverse topography and wide variety of microclimates provides visitors with the varied sensations of strolling…
The mission of the jenkins arboretum & gardens is to preserve natural, tranquil woodlands for community enjoyment, to showcase native plants and a world class collection of rhododendrons and azaleas, and to promote environmental…
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
Pittsburgh Botanic Garden inspires people to value plants, garden design and the natural world by cultivating plant collections of the Allegheny Plateau and temperate regions, creating display gardens, conducting educational programs and…
The mission of the buffalo and erie county botanical gardens society, inc. is to deepen the connection between people and plants through beautiful gardens and extraordinary experiences.
The holden arboretum connects people with the wonder, beauty, and value of trees and plants, to inspire action for healthy communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Queens Botanical Garden Society Inc and the most unlike its peers is Henry E Huntington Library and Art Gallery. 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 46 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
47 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. 47 of the 54 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 QUEENS BOTANICAL GARDEN SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds THE PENNSYLVANIA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA LANDSCAPE ARBORETUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ATLANTA BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds DESERT BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds GARFIELD PARK CONSERVATORY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds DELAWARE CENTER FOR HORTICULTURE INC ↗
- Who funds PHILA SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF LANDMARKS ↗
- Who funds KNOXVILLE BOTANICAL GARDENS AND ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds TREES ATLANTA INC ↗
- Who funds EarthDance ↗
- Who funds MARY MITCHELL FAMILY AND YOUTH CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PHIPPS CONSERVATORY AND BOTANICAL GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds DENVER BOTANIC GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE GARDENS OF SPRING CREEK ↗
- Who funds Friends of the National Arboretum ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BOARD OF TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL TROPICAL BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO BOTANICAL GARDEN SOCIETY AT STRYBING ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds BOTANICAL GARDEN OF THE PIEDMONT ↗
- Who funds Friends of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens ↗
- Who funds OLIVEWOODS GARDENS & LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FAIRCHILD TROPICAL BOTANIC GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MORTON ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds ALASKA BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds THE BIRMINGHAM BOTANICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CITY GREEN INC ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN GREENS INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds Ability Garden ↗
- Who funds ISAAC W BERNHEIM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Guadalupe River Park Conservancy ↗
- Who funds BROOKGREEN GARDENS ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CONSERVATORY ↗
- Who funds PAUL J CIENER BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds IDAHO BOTANICAL GARDEN 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: Ibm International Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Charities Aid Foundation America · The US Charitable Gift Trust · The Chicago Community Trust · Edward Jones Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment 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 American Public Gardens Association 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.
- City Green Inc — 100% of income from government
- Delaware Center for Horticulture Inc — 4% of income from government
- Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Inc — 4% of income from government
- Worcester County Horticultural Society — 2% of income from government
- Connecticut College — 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.