· Private foundation
Ben Cohen Charitable Trust
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WILLIAM TRIPPLEY YOUTH DEVELOPMENT FTD | $3,000 |
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 (FY17–20, $26k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 58% 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 +57% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 1 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- PPPEOPLE POWER INITIATIVES INC4× · 2017–2021 · $966k · revenue +129% · 94% of their budget
- PAPUBLIC ASSETS INSTITUTE INC2× · 2019–2020 · $80k · revenue +35%
URBAN AFFAIRS COALITION2× · 2020–2021 · $70k · revenue +68%
Funded once
- RBRANDOLPH BOURNE INSTITUTE INCone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue +14%
- TCTHE COMMON COUNSEL FDTN-M4BL FUNDone grant, 2020 · $25k
- IRINVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS & EDITORS INCone grant, 2019 · $25k · revenue +24%
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 open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The global impact investing network, inc. is dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing to solve systemic problems facing people and the planet. impact investments are investments made into companies,…
Help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
The manhattan institute is a community of scholars, journalists, activists, and civic leaders dedicated to advancing opportunity, individual liberty, and the rule of law in america and its great cities.
The r street institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public-policy research organization ("think tank"). our mission is to engage in policy research and outreach to promote free markets and limited, effective government. (continued on…
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
Vermont public informs, educates, and entertains through public service journalism and enlightening content rooted in vermont. our storytelling enriches lives and fosters community connection and understanding.
The center for international policy is a woman-led, progressive, independent nonprofit center for research, education, and advocacy working to advance a more peaceful, just, and sustainable u.s. approach to foreign policy. through…
Making our government work better is a daunting task, and we are a small organization seeking to transform a government that employs millions of civilians and manages trillions of dollars in taxpayer revenue needed to protect public…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is People Power Initiatives Inc and the most unlike its peers is Times Up 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 34 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 52 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 VANGUARD CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE POWER INITIATIVES INC ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC ASSETS INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN AFFAIRS COALITION ↗
- Who funds RANDOLPH BOURNE INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS & EDITORS INC ↗
- Who funds Resources for Human Development Inc ↗
- Who funds CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ↗
- Who funds GREENPEACE INC ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE'S ACTION INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds BEAUTIFUL TROUBLE INC ↗
- Who funds Ethical Society of Police ↗
- Who funds JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Friends of the Congo ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM TRIPPLEY YOUTH DEVELOPMENT FTD ↗
- Who funds Times Up Inc ↗
- Who funds DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds FLYNN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS LTD ↗
- Who funds TESSERACT RESEARCH CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CONSTITUTION SOCIETY FOR LAW & POLICY ↗
- Who funds VERMONT FOODBANK ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF VERMONT ↗
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: The Vermont Community Foundation · Ben & Jerry's Foundation Inc · George W Mergens Foundation · The Windham Foundation Inc · The San Francisco Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Tides Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc
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 Ben Cohen Charitable Trust 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.
- Community Solutions Inc — 55% of income from government
- Manna Soup Kitchen — 15% of income from government
- Vermont Foodbank — 13% of income from government
- Flynn Center for the Performing Arts Ltd — 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 Ben Cohen Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Ben Cohen Charitable Trust 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.