· Private foundation
Ben & Miriam Lau Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $35k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $159k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VOLUNTEER ALLY | $40,000 |
| HAWAII PACIFIC HEALTH | $35,000 |
| THE QUEEN'S MEDICAL CENTER | $30,000 |
| ALOHA UNITED WAY | $20,000 |
| HAWAII FOODBANK | $14,000 |
| KUNIA COUNTRY FARMS EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH | $10,000 |
| KAPIOLANI HEALTH FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| THE PANTRY BY FEEDING HAWAII TOGETHER | $7,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $5,000 |
| HAWAII RUSH SOCCER CLUB | $5,000 |
| PUNAHOU SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| MILILANI HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETIC FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| HAWAII HOME PROJECT | $2,500 |
| MILILANI MAUKA SCHOOL PTO INC | $2,500 |
| HAWAIIAN ISLAND TWISTERS | $2,500 |
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 (FY17–24, $69k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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.
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 +65% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 2 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, 98% 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2024 · $211k · revenue +56%
- TQTHE QUEEN'S MEDICAL CENTER5× · 2017–2024 · $210k · revenue +65%
- AUALOHA UNITED WAY INC8× · 2017–2024 · $155k · revenue +97%
Funded once
- DHDIAMOND HEAD THEATREone grant, 2020 · $34k · revenue -17%
- LPLANAKILA PACIFICgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue +28%
- ARAMERICAN RED CROSS HAWAII CHAPTERone grant, 2018 · $25k
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.
Kapi'olani medical specialists (dba hawai'i pacific health medical group) is a multispecialty provider group dedicated to providing world-class care for adults and children across hawai'i and the pacific region working in partnership with…
Kaua'i medical clinic, an affliate of hawai'i pacific health, is a multi-specialty clinic dedicated to providing world-class care for adults and children across hawai'i and the pacific region in partnership with kapi'olani medical center…
Palliative care is a win-win-win-win. expanding access to palliative care benefits all parts of the healthcare system. people living with serious illness are better able to manage physical and emotional symptoms and have peace of mind that…
The mission of pali momi foundation is to create a healthier hawai'i.
The waianae coast comprehensive health center ("the health center") is a healing center that provides accessible and affordable medical and traditional healing services with aloha. the health center is a learning center that offers health…
Hawaii medical association is dedicated to serving physicians, their patients and community through representation, advocacy, and public service. core activities: advocacy, education
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific and the most unlike its peers is Kunia Country Farms Educational Outreach. 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 51 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 42 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 UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE QUEEN'S MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds ALOHA UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds HAWAII FOODBANK INC ↗
- Who funds Hawai'i Pacific Health ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEER ALLY ↗
- Who funds PUNAHOU SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Straub Foundation ↗
- Who funds KUNIA COUNTRY FARMS EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds DIAMOND HEAD THEATRE ↗
- Who funds IHS THE INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds FEEDING HAWAII TOGETHER ↗
- Who funds LANAKILA PACIFIC ↗
- Who funds BLOOD BANK OF HAWAII ↗
- Who funds HAWAII LITERACY INC ↗
- Who funds Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific ↗
- Who funds HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HAWAII RUSH SOCCER CLUB ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Kapi'olani Health Foundation ↗
- Who funds HAWAII MEALS ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT HAWAII INC ↗
- Who funds HAWAIIAN HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NA KAMA KAI ↗
- Who funds Pacific & Asian Affairs Council ↗
- Who funds THE GLASS FUSION COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds HAWAIIAN ISLAND TWISTERS ↗
- Who funds ASSISTANCE DOGS OF HAWAII ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF HONOLULU ↗
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 James and Juanita Wo Foundation · First Insurance Company of Hawaii Charitable Foundation · Tradewind Group Foundation · Bank of Hawaii Charitable Fdn · J Watumull Fund · First Hawaiian Bank Foundation · Central Pacific Bank Foundation · Atherton Family Foundation · The Robert & Betty Wo Foundation · McInerny Foundation-- · Kosasa Foundation · Aloha United Way 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 & Miriam Lau 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.
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 & Miriam Lau Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ben & Miriam Lau 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.