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· Private foundation

Best Foundation

Its FY2018 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$17k
Granted FY2018
9
Grants FY2018
6
States reached
$5k
Largest
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20172018.

Education$11kInternational$8kArts & Culture$4kReligion$2kPhilanthropy$500Animals$200
02FY2018 · 9 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

$1,000
Median grant
6
States reached
$0
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO$5,000
DUKE UNIVERSITY$5,000
AMERICARES FOUNDATION$3,000
JAIL CHAPLAINCY$2,000
MIAMI CITY BALLET$1,000
MARCO ISLAND ACADEMY$360
CHARITY NAVIGATOR$250
WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC$250
Individual grant recipient$200
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY17–18, $500) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%CHARITY NAVIGATOR: $250 → 7%CHARITY NAVIGATOR: $250 → 7%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

03Your field

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.

1
University of Miami

See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.

Education
2
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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.

Education
3
New York University

Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.

Education
4
William Marsh Rice University

As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…

Education
5
University of Southern California

The central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…

Education
6
Manhattanville University

To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.

Education
7
Bar Ilan University in Israel Inc

Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.

8
Webster University

Founded in 1915, webster is a private non-profit and global university that is committed to delivering high-quality learning experiences that transform students for global citizenship and individual excellence.

Education
9
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Inc

International consortium of investigative journalists, inc.'s (icij) mission is to show people how the world really works through stories that rock the world; forcing positive change.

International
10
Bentley University

Organization's mission bentley university believes good business can impact more than the bottom line - it can change the world. bentley is a community of future business leaders who will deliver value in the marketplace and lasting…

Education
11
Trustees of Boston University

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.…

12
Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania

The trustees of the university of pennsylvania (the "university") sees itself as having a public service mission. in such regard, the university aims to provide a rich and diverse educational environment for its students; to pioneer…

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wikimedia Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Americares Foundation Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 8 of the 10 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
8/8
Grantees still filing
8/8
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

DUKE UNIVERSITY — $5,000 · EducationDUKE UNIVERSITYUniversity of Chicago — $5,000 · EducationUniversity of Chicago+1 more — $250 · EducationGLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INC — $5,000 · InternationalGLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INCAMERICARES FOUNDATION INC — $3,000 · InternationalAMERICARES FOUNDATION INCMIAMI CITY BALLET INC — $4,000 · Arts & CultureMIAMI CITY BALLET…JAIL CHAPLAINCY — $2,000 · OtherJAIL CHAPLA…MARCO ISLAND ACADEMY A PUBLIC CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL — $360 · OtherMARCO ISLAN…Individual grant recipient — $200 · OtherIndividual …Charity Navigator — $500 · Human Services
Education$10,250International$8,000Arts & Culture$4,000Other$2,560Human Services$500

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetDUKE UNIVERSITY — $5,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetGLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INC — $5,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetUniversity of Chicago — $5,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetMIAMI CITY BALLET INC — $4,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetAMERICARES FOUNDATION INC — $3,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCharity Navigator — $500 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetMARCO ISLAND ACADEMY A PUBLIC CHARTER HIGH SCHOOL — $360 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetWIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC — $250 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
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.

Government reliance of your grantees

Every dot is one organization Best 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 10%0%1%3%5%your share of their income ↑0%8%15%22%30%share of the org’s income from governmentmedian 0%
  • Americares Foundation Inc0% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
1get no government money at all
3report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–30%
typical government reliance, FY2025

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.

04Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Best Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Best 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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 10 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2018, released 2018. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

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