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· Private foundation

Aspiration Impact Foundation

To support charitable organizations that help expand economic opportunity to lower income americans.

$131k
Granted FY2021
12
Grants FY2021
9
States reached
$20k
Largest
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20182021.

Environment$115kPhilanthropy$49kCommunity Improvement$33kFood & Nutrition$10kInternational$10k
02FY2021 · 12 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

$10,000
Median grant
9
States reached
$4k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
NATIONAL OUTDOOR LEADER$20,000
LOUSIANA BUCKET BRIGADE$10,000
GRID ALTERNATIVES$10,000
ASIAN PACIFIC ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK$10,000
GASP$10,000
INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK$10,000
PLANT CHICAGO$10,000
GREAT OLD BROADS FOR WILDERNESS$10,000
HONOR THE EARTH$10,000
HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT ALLIANCE OF UTAH$10,000
RAINFOREST FLOW$10,000
GREEN LATINOS$10,000
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY21–21, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%GREAT OLD BROADS FOR WILDERNESS: $10k → 12%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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

MN
IL
NY
WY
CA
UT
CO
DC
LA
AL

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.

03Your field

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.

1
Global Forest Generation

Global Forest Generation restores and protects forest ecosystems in partnership with grassroots leaders and local communities across vast landscapes which play a critical role in preserving water, protecting biodiversity, storing carbon,…

Environment
2
Environment Now
3
California Environmental Justice Alliance

Our mission is to fight against fossil fuel executives and industries that have turned our communities into dumping grounds for toxic waste, poisoning our air, water, lan, and bodies. We organize to oppose giant oil refineries, dirty…

Environment
4
Green 20

Green 2.0 is a leader ensuring the environmental sector's commitment to advancing effective and inclusive policies and practices to support all communities.

Environment
5
Fresh Energy

Shape and drive bold policy solutions to achieve equitable carbon-neutral economies.

Environment
6
Rainforest Action Network

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) works toward a world where the rights and dignity of all communities are respected and where healthy forests, a stable climate and wild biodiversity are protected and celebrated.

Environment
7
Earthworks

The Corporation is organized exclusively for charitable and educational purposes. Earthworks is dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the impacts of irresponsible mineral and energy development while seeking…

Public Benefit
8
Taproot Earth

Taproot Earth works with communities to support strategies around the use of water, energy and land.

Environment
9
Advocates for Climate Innovation
Philanthropy
10
350PDX

Building a diverse grassroots movement to address the causes of climate disruption through justice-based solutions by inspiring, training and mobilizing people to act.

Environment
11
Environmental Law Foundation

Environmental Law Foundation's (ELF) mission is to protect the environment, communities, and consumers against harmful toxics and other environmental harms. Our work consistently improves environmental quality for those most at risk by…

Crime & Legal
12
Natural Resources Defense Council Inc

We safeguard the earth: its people, its plants and animals, and (see schedule o) the natural systems on which all life depends. we work to restore the integrity of the elements that sustain life - air, land, and water - to defend…

Environment

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grid Alternatives and the most unlike its peers is Indigenous Environmental Network. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

14 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 14 of the 15 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
4
Early backer (in before they grew)
14/14
Grantees still filing
7/14
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

NATIONAL OUTDOOR LEADERSHIP SCHOOL — $20,000 · EnvironmentNATIONAL OUTDOOR LEADERSHIP SCHOOLGasp — $10,000 · EnvironmentGaspHONOR THE EARTH — $10,000 · EnvironmentHONOR THE EARTHHEALTHY ENVIRONMENT ALLIANCE OF UTAH — $10,000 · EnvironmentHEALTHY ENVIRONMENT ALLIANCE OF UTAHGRID ALTERNATIVES — $10,000 · EnvironmentGRID ALTERNATIVESLOUISIANA BUCKET BRIGADE — $10,000 · EnvironmentLOUISIANA BUCKET BRIGADEGreenLatinos — $10,000 · EnvironmentGreenLatinosAsian Pacific Environmental Network — $10,000 · EnvironmentAsian Pacific Environmental NetworkBRIGHT FUNDS FOUNDATION — $49,102 · PhilanthropyBRIGHT FUNDS FOUNDATIONACCION OPPORTUNITY FUND INC — $33,372 · Community ImprovementACCION OPPORTUNIT…GREAT OLD BROADS FOR WILDERNESS — $10,000 · Human ServicesPlant Chicago NFP — $10,000 · Food & NutritionRAINFOREST FLOW — $10,000 · InternationalINDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK — $10,000 · Education350 NEW ORLEANS INC — $5,000 · Other
Environment$90,000Philanthropy$49,102Community Improvement$33,372Human Services$10,000Food & Nutrition$10,000International$10,000Education$10,000Other$5,000

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetBRIGHT FUNDS FOUNDATION — $49,102 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetACCION OPPORTUNITY FUND INC — $33,372 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetNATIONAL OUTDOOR LEADERSHIP SCHOOL — $20,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetGasp — $10,000 over 1y, 1.1% of budgetHONOR THE EARTH — $10,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetHEALTHY ENVIRONMENT ALLIANCE OF UTAH — $10,000 over 1y, 1.0% of budgetGREAT OLD BROADS FOR WILDERNESS — $10,000 over 1y, 1.1% of budgetGRID ALTERNATIVES — $10,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetPlant Chicago NFP — $10,000 over 1y, 2.4% of budgetLOUISIANA BUCKET BRIGADE — $10,000 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetRAINFOREST FLOW — $10,000 over 1y, 3.1% of budgetGreenLatinos — $10,000 over 1y, 0.8% of budgetAsian Pacific Environmental Network — $10,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetINDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK — $10,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budget
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.

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.

Tides FoundationCA15.7× affinity6 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Tides Foundation · Patagoniaorg · Natural Resources Defense Council Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · Network for Good · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Aspiration Impact 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%your share of their income ↑0%25%50%75%100%share of the org’s income from government
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    4report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    typical government reliance, FY2025

    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.

    04Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Aspiration Impact Foundation?

    Find your warmest path to Aspiration Impact 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 15 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2021, released 2021. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2023) is on record but names no grant recipient (grants abroad are filed by region only, and grants under $5,000 are not itemized), so the figures above are from FY2021, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

    Source object · view filing

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