· Public charity
Ballot Initiative Strategy Center Inc
Ballot initiative strategy center, inc.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $350k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ORGANIZE ACTION INC | $200,000 |
| PROTECT OUR SCHOOLS KENTUCKY | $50,000 |
| VOTER RIGHTS COLORADO | $50,000 |
| PROGRESS ARIZONA | $50,000 |
| MISSOURI JOBS WITH JUSTICE VOTER ACTION | $45,000 |
| NEBRASKA VOTES | $10,000 |
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 (FY21–22, $570k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +302% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 4 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, 62% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $155k 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
- A4ACTIVATE 48 EDUCATION FUND2× · 2021–2022 · $570k · revenue ×12
- OAORGANIZE ACTION2× · 2023–2024 · $550k · revenue +302%
- PAPROGRESS ARIZONA3× · 2021–2024 · $150k · revenue +389%
Funded once
- TATIDES ADVOCACYgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $60k · revenue +130%
- PTPROMOTE THE VOTEone grant, 2018 · $20k
- CMCLEAN MISSOURIone grant, 2018 · $15k
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 oppose a colorado statewide ballot initiative to join the national popular vote compact
Support state initative petition
The Organization was established to coordinate and promote progressive issues, policies, initiatives, and referenda, and to pursue electoral reform that expands access to the ballot.
Protect AR Constitution is a grassroots, citizen-led effort to defeat the legislatures referred amendment which would change the threshhold of passage for ballot measures to a 60% super majority. We protect the constitutional rights of…
Our voice our vote arizona engages in community organizing, leadership development, and civic participation efforts. the organization focuses on voter registration, education, and engagement to strengthen communities and encourage active…
Colorado people's action (cpa) is a member-driven, racial justice organization dedicated to winning long-lasting progressive public policies in colorado. cpa builds power by mobilizing voters, electing our own people to office, holding…
Support "yes" vote on referendum dealing with national popular vote
Advocacy and passage of initiatives to eliminate the partisan primary to allow all voters to vote in the primary for any candidate.
Ballot issue political action committee to advocate for the defeat of a constitutional amendment that would require a 60% threshold for any future constitutional amendments.
Supports Measure to Remove Lawmakers Power to Set Their Own Pay
Protect voting rights in the united states for all citizens and expand voting rights to citizens who have been historically disenfranchised or under-represented in the electoral process.
To oppose a Michigan ballot measure
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Progress Arizona and the most unlike its peers is Oregonians United Against Profiling. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 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.
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 ACTIVATE 48 EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds ORGANIZE ACTION ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA WINS ↗
- Who funds PROGRESS ARIZONA ↗
- Who funds ADRC ACTION ↗
- Who funds TIDES ADVOCACY ↗
- Who funds COLORADANS FOR ACCESSIBLE AND SECURE ELECTIONS ↗
- Who funds PROTECT OUR SCHOOLS KY ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI JOBS WITH JUSTICE VOTER ACTION ↗
- Who funds PROMOTE THE VOTE ↗
- Who funds We the People of Florida ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA VOTES ↗
- Who funds Oregonians United Against Profiling ↗
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: Sixteen Thirty Fund · Living United for Change in Arizona · Instructional Telecommunications Foundation Inc · Communications Workers of America Afl-Cio Clc · Way to Win Action Fund Inc · American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees · Open Society Action Fund Inc · All Hands on Deck Network Inc · Tides 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 Ballot Initiative Strategy Center Inc 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.
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.