· Private foundation
Arcus 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k57 grants · $147k
- $10k–50k81 grants · $2.2M
- $50k–250k210 grants · $21M
- $250k+17 grants · $7.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAVE THE CHIMPS INC | $1,167,876 |
| BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY | $750,000 |
| FOREST PEOPLES PROGRAMME | $583,374 |
| BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY | $525,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL TRANS FUND | $500,000 |
| PANECO FOUNDATION | $481,312 |
| BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY | $475,000 |
| PROTEUS FUND INC | $400,000 |
| REWILD | $375,000 |
| GREENPEACE FUND INC | $352,817 |
| UHAI EASHRI COMPANY LIMITED | $300,000 |
| JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE FOR WILDLIFE RESEARCH EDUCATION & CONSERVATION | $299,223 |
| THE OTHER FOUNDATION | $266,000 |
| AFRICAN WILDLIFE FOUNDATION | $250,492 |
| ASTRAEA FOUNDATION INC | $250,000 |
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 — 66% of grant dollars ($109M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 34% that went abroad ($55M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY19–24, $793k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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
Beyond the US — 34% of all-years giving ($55M)
45 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 990filings; 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 17% of Arcus 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 +41% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
336 repeat relationships — 205 still active in FY2024, 131 since wound down; 59 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.3M 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
- BPBOREALIS PHILANTHROPY6× · 2019–2024 · $8.0M · revenue +62%
- JGJANE GOODALL INSTITUTE FOR WILDLIFE RESEARCH EDUCATION AND CONSERVATION6× · 2019–2024 · $5.3M · revenue +61%
REWILD6× · 2019–2024 · $3.8M · revenue +243%
Funded once
- VFVIRUNGA FUND INCone grant, 2019 · $250k · revenue 0%
- HRHUMAN RIGHTS AWARENESS AND PROMOTION FORUM (HRAPF) LIMITED (BY GUARANTEE)one grant, 2021 · $200k
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO INCone grant, 2019 · $150k · revenue +17%
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.
To provide leadership and professional development, education and research to create workplaces free from discrimination.
To lead and coordinate the global initiative to address and prevent criminalization, violence, and impunity against indigenous peoples towards strengthening their collectives, solidarity, and actions.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
To investigate, research, write, publish, present conferences and teach with respect to global, regional, transboundary, and comparative environmental issues and to make the findings from such activities available to the general public; to…
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Our mission as a global alliance is to provide strategies, research, and resources that support the critical agency and influence of women's foundations and gender justice funders in the movement for equality, justice, and power for all.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Poder. 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 27 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% 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.
336 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. 336 of the 593 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 SAVE THE CHIMPS INC ↗
- Who funds BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY ↗
- Who funds JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE FOR WILDLIFE RESEARCH EDUCATION AND CONSERVATION ↗
- Who funds THE ASTRAEA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PROTEUS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds REWILD ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds GREENPEACE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Transgender Law Center ↗
- Who funds International Rivers Network ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FUNDERS FOR LESBIAN AND GAY ISSUES INC DBA FUNDERS FOR LGBTQ ISSUES ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN WILDLIFE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Center for Orangutan & Chimpanzee Conservation Inc ↗
- Who funds Campaign For Southern Equality ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds VILLAGE ENTERPRISE FUND ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK CITY GAY AND LESBIAN ANTI-VIOLENCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Health in Harmony ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN PARKS FOUNDATION OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC RELIGION RESEARCH INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL GREENGRANTS FUND ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE RESOURCES AND CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY INITIATIVES ↗
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: Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · The Ford Foundation · Borealis Philanthropy · Foundation to Promote Open Society · Proteus Fund Inc · Open Society Institute · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr Fund · Tides Foundation · The Astraea Foundation Inc · Groundswell Fund · Foundation for a Just Society
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 Arcus 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.
- Wildlife Impact — 84% of income from government
- Pan African Sanctuary Alliance Inc — 68% of income from government
- Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program Inc — 27% of income from government
- Jacksonville Area Sexual Minority Youth Network Inc — 16% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- The Theater Offensive Inc — 2% of income from government
- Provincetown Commons Inc — 0% of income from government
- Glbtq Legal Advocates & Defenders Inc — 0% of income from government
- Keshet 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 Arcus Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Arcus 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.