· Private foundation
Bertelsmann Foundation (Na) Inc
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 $10k2 grants · $12k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $25k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| GERMAN AMERICAN PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM | $15,000 |
| HARVARD UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| HARVARD UNIVERSITY | $7,500 |
| WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL | $4,000 |
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 US giving — 85% of grant dollars ($366k). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 15% that went abroad ($64k) is mapped below.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 84% of your 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.
Beyond the US — 15% of all-years giving ($64k)
4 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 29% of Bertelsmann Foundation (Na) Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 57% of the giving stays in DC; read by stated purpose it is 33% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
4 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 2 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, 13% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $104k 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
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC2× · 2017–2022 · $65k · revenue +243%- GAGerman American Partnership Program CO Goethe-Institut2× · 2024–2025 · $25k · revenue 0%
- TGTHE GERMAN MARSHALL FUND OF THE UNITED STATES2× · 2023–2024 · $20k · revenue +22%
Funded once
NATIONAL CENTER FOR CIVIC INNOVATION INgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $40k · revenue +329%
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $38k · revenue +33%- TDTHE DEMOCRACY & CULTURE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $12k
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 American-German Institute is a center for policy research and scholarship dedicated to the most important political, economic, and security issues confronting Germany and the United States in the global arena. AGI anticipates…
The peterson institute for international economics (piie) is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening prosperity and human welfare in the global economy through expert analysis and practical…
The american enterprise institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. aei pursues these ideals through independent thinking and the…
To provide accurate, objective information and analysis on international strategic issues for legislators, diplomats, foreign affairs analysts, international business leaders, economists, the military, defense commentators, journalists,…
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
NCEI's mission is to mobilize resources and capabilities on a national scale toward the goal of ensuring that 21st century entrepreneurial opportunity and innovative potential reach every community across the nation. Through its work NCEI…
The institute for energy research (ier) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. ier maintains that freely functioning…
Competitive enterprise institute (cei) is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. we believe that consumers are best helped not by government regulation but by being…
Iri advances freedom and democracy worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, democratic governance and the rule of law.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Aspen Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is German American Partnership Program Co Goethe-Institut. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 20 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 THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR CIVIC INNOVATION IN ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds German American Partnership Program CO Goethe-Institut ↗
- Who funds THE GERMAN MARSHALL FUND OF THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds Information Technology and Innovation Foundation ↗
- Who funds The Center for Election Innovation & Research ↗
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: National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Bertelsmann Foundation (Na) 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.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% 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.
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