· Private foundation
Bang-Woel Lu Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k15 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $95k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RAYMOND JAMES CHARITABLE DAF | $94,693 |
| PKD FOUNDATION | $19,911 |
| ASIAN TASK FORCE AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE | $2,000 |
| THREE SQUARES NEW ENGLAND | $1,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR CHINESE PERFORMING ARTS | $1,000 |
| SMILE TRAIN | $1,000 |
| ZIGEN FUND | $1,000 |
| TEXAS 4000 FOR CANCER | $1,000 |
| MASS GENERAL HOSPITAL | $1,000 |
| PINE STREET INN | $1,000 |
| THE GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK | $1,000 |
| PERKINGS SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND | $500 |
| SHRINERS HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN | $500 |
| GBCCA | $500 |
| FRIENDS OF WESTONS COUNCIL ON AGING INC | $500 |
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 (FY18–25, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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.
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 +54% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 23% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $98k 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
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC6× · 2018–2024 · $6k · revenue +89%- GBGREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC7× · 2018–2025 · $6k · revenue +84%
SMILE TRAIN INC7× · 2018–2025 · $6k · revenue +18%
Funded once
- UFUMASS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $10k
- ALA LIFE A TIME FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $3k
- PIPLAN INTERNATIONAL USA INCone grant, 2024 · $1k · revenue -9%
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The organization's primary exempt purpose is to provide access to and conduct activities in furtherance of higher education.
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
Wentworth institute of technology is a nationally recognized private coeducational and residential university of higher education with a mission to empower, inspire and innovate through experiential learning with a core purpose of career…
Wheaton college provides a transformative liberal arts education, combining theory and practice, for intellectually curious students within a collaborative and vibrant extended community and network that values and strives to create an…
Commonwealth care alliance, inc.'s mission is to improve the health and well-being of people with significant needs by innovating, coordinating and providing the highest quality, individualized care.
Aclu foundation of ma was established to defend freedoms guaranteed in the constitution and bill of rights through public education and litigation.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Childrens Museum and the most unlike its peers is The Weston Firemens Relief Association. 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 39 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 56 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 PKD Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE ZIGEN FUND INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR CHINESE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds PINE STREET INN INC ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF WESTON'S COUNCIL ON AGING INC ↗
- Who funds THREE SQUARES NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds ASIAN TASK FORCE AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INC ↗
- Who funds THE HOME FOR LITTLE WANDERERS INC ↗
- Who funds THE SHRINERS' HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds LAND'S SAKE INC ↗
- Who funds PLAN INTERNATIONAL USA INC ↗
- Who funds TEXAS 4000 FOR CANCER ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds Cape Cod Community College Educational Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA 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: Eastern Bank Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Network for Good · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Bang-Woel Lu 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- The Home for Little Wanderers Inc — 38% of income from government
- Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence Inc — 32% of income from government
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Pine Street Inn Inc — 11% of income from government
- The Shriners' Hospital for Children — 6% of income from government
- Land's Sake Inc — 3% of income from government
- The Childrens Museum — 1% of income from government
- Massachusetts Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- Rosie's Place 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 Bang-Woel Lu Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Bang-Woel Lu 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.