· Public charity
American University
To advance knowledge, foster intellectual curiosity, build community, and empower lives of purpose, service, and leadership.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 47 grants below total $4,247,231 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $205,006,105 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $200,758,874 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 · FY2023
- Under $10k1 grant · $9k
- $10k–50k22 grants · $683k
- $50k–250k21 grants · $2.3M
- $250k+3 grants · $1.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $491,122 |
| OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY THE | $400,995 |
| JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY | $358,395 |
| GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY | $213,071 |
| LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY AND A&M COLLEGE | $201,456 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN | $159,514 |
| IEARN INC | $159,258 |
| NOVA SOUTHERN UNIVERSIY | $157,490 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS | $148,339 |
| MARYLAND INSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART | $122,927 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS | $121,129 |
| BOSTON UNIVERSITY | $111,124 |
| TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY | $109,577 |
| MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL THE | $88,608 |
| UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA | $87,025 |
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 (FY18–20, $51k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 77% 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 +35% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
51 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2023, 20 since wound down; 15 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.3M 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
- ARALL RISE FOR JUSTICE3× · 2018–2020 · $978k · revenue +85%
- IIIEARN INC8× · 2017–2024 · $892k · revenue +49%
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY7× · 2019–2025 · $728k · revenue +25%
Funded once
- MSMICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAWone grant, 2019 · $124k · revenue -99%
- BRBelden Russonello Strategistsone grant, 2017 · $98k
- TJTHE JUSTICE MANAGEMENT INSTITUTEone grant, 2019 · $63k · revenue -41%
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.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Education and Research
Education, research, medical services and other public services.
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…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
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…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Ceu is committed to promoting the values of open society and self-reflective critical thinking. it aims at excellence in the mastery of established knowledge, courage to pursue the creation of new knowledge in the humanities, the social…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Georgetown University and the most unlike its peers is Seashore Mission Inc. 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 52 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.
74 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. 74 of the 96 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 Yale University ↗
- Who funds ALL RISE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds IEARN INC ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds University of Miami ↗
- Who funds INSIGHT CRIME INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Rochester Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DREXEL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds TRINITY COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds THE HOWARD UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PARTNERSHIP FOR A SECURE AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds GALLAUDET UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Maryland Institute ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS ASSOCIATION OF HEALTH BOARDS INC ↗
- Who funds EARTHRIGHTS INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds Nova Southeastern University Inc ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LAW ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SRC Inc ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION NETWORK ↗
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: Johns Hopkins University · American Chemical Society · Georgetown University · National Collegiate Athletic Association · Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc · Howard Hughes Medical Institute · American Council of Learned Societies · University of Pittsburgh · The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York · Greater Washington Community Foundation · University of Delaware
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 University 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.
- Latin American Community Center Inc — 34% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Yale University — 12% of income from government
- National Center for Victims of Crime Inc — 10% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Nova Southeastern University Inc — 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.