· Private foundation
Bernard & Nancy Karwick 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
92% of Bernard & Nancy Karwick Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Mayo Clinic, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 12 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year Bernard & Nancy Karwick Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 20 organizations, $231k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2019
- Under $10k15 grants · $52k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $179k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CATO INSTITUTE | $29,000 |
| AMPHIBIAN ARK | $20,000 |
| DAVID SHELDRICK WILDLIFE TRUST USA | $20,000 |
| MAYO CLINIC | $20,000 |
| JUDICIAL WATCH | $20,000 |
| WILD ANIMAL HEALTH FD AMERICAN ASSOC OF ZOO VETERINARIANS | $15,000 |
| AMERICAN HIMALAYAN FUND | $15,000 |
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $10,000 |
| ATLAS NETWORK | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN VETERINARY MEDICAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| A KID'S BRAIN TUMOR CURE | $10,000 |
| SEMPER FI FUND | $6,000 |
| HIMALAYAN CATARACT PROJECT | $5,000 |
| NATIONAL PEDIATRIC CANCER FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| 4PAWS FOR ABILITY | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $34k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 77% 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 +70% since the first grant, against +45% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2019, 7 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (too recent to call). Read against FY2019, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k 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
- CICATO INSTITUTE7× · 2017–2024 · $199k · revenue +70%
- AAAMPHIBIAN ARK7× · 2017–2024 · $160k · revenue +31%
JUDICIAL WATCH INC4× · 2017–2021 · $70k · revenue +141%
Funded once
- AAAMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ZOO VETERINARIANS COgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +93%
- OCOCEAN CONSERVANCYgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue +31%
- MBMONARCH BUTTERFLY FUNDone grant, 2017 · $5k
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Our mission is to act to conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, choosing solutions that are sustainable, based on sound science and take into account human needs.
The aquarium of the pacific's mission is to instill a sense of wonder, respect, and stewardship for the pacific ocean, its inhabitants, and ecosystems.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
The institute for bird populations enables science-based conservation of species and habitats by studying the abundance, demography, and ecology of birds and other wildlife.
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.
The nmmf's mission is to improve and protect life for marine mammals, humans, and our shared oceans through science, service, and education. our vision is to be the leading laboratory in marine mammal science, where critical questions…
Using legal advocacy to make advances in science and technology safer for people and the planet.
To sustain, restore, and enhance the nation's fish, wildlife, plants, and habitats.
Our mission is to invest in and accelerate the development of the most promising future leaders in biomedical research with global impact.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Judicial Watch Inc and the most unlike its peers is Advocates for Snake Preservation. 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 31 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% 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 47 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 MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds AMPHIBIAN ARK ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds THE DAVID SHELDRICK WILDLIFE TRUST USA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN VETERINARY MEDICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds HIMALAYAN CATARACT PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SEMPER FI & AMERICA'S FUND ↗
- Who funds THE INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds 4 PAWS FOR ABILITY INC ↗
- Who funds EMPIRE CENTER FOR PUBLIC POLICY INC ↗
- Who funds THE MARINE MAMMAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ZOO VETERINARIANS CO ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATES FOR SNAKE PRESERVATION ↗
- Who funds WATER FOR PEOPLE ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENCE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL SNOW LEOPARD TRUST ↗
- Who funds MAUI HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PROJECT VERITAS ↗
- Who funds Charity Navigator ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds SANKARA EYE FOUNDATION USA ↗
- Who funds OCEAN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Big Waters Land Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PEDIATRIC CANCER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Foundation for the Preservation of Honeybees ↗
- Who funds THE BIODIVERSITY GROUP ↗
- Who funds Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation of the United States Inc ↗
- Who funds Ocean Alliance 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: Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Bernard & Nancy Karwick 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.