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Washington, D.C. · Public charity

Best Friends Foundation

Best friends is a youth development program which promotes healthy social-emotional behavior and works to prevent student engagement in activities that would put them at risk, especially with specific interest to bullying and violence.

$32k
Granted FY2023
19
Grants FY2023
19
Organizations funded FY2023
32%
First-time grantees FY2023
Read the full brief
Median grant, FY2023
$1,000
Largest grant, FY2023
$5,805
Organizations funded a year
14 to 25
FY2021 to FY2023
States reached, FY2023
11
Total assets, FY2023
$247k

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2023, 32% of the organizations Best Friends Foundation funded were first-time grantees, receiving 22% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2023, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k went to new ones.

50%100%’22’23
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’22’23
EducationOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY202319$32k32%
FY202214$17k0%
FY202125$50kn/a
100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2021 to 2023.

Education$99k

Where its grants go

Grant dollars by states, across the years we hold.

Which US states its grants reach

NY
OH
PA
UT
CO
WV
VA
MD
NC
DC
AL
GA

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2021 to FY2023, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
Carson Scholars Fund Inc$18,27011%
Trinity College$12,80530%
Kent State University$4,0003n/a
Temple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education$2,00010%
The Howard University$2,00020%
Morehouse College$2,00020%
New York University$2,00020%
Mercy University$1,00010%
Lincoln University$1,00010%

Plus 22 recipients with no EIN on record ($54k), not named here.

Where it is load-bearing

Each grantee by its size and the share of its budget Best Friends Foundation supplied at peak.

25%50%75%100%$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetCarson Scholars Fund Inc: $18,270 over 1y, 1.1% of budgetTrinity College: $12,805 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetTemple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education: $2,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetThe Howard University: $2,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetMorehouse College: $2,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetNew York University: $2,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetMercy University: $1,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetLincoln University: $1,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budget

Tap a dot to name the grantee.

How this is measured
Share of budget is the funder’s grant in a year over the grantee’s total revenue that year, at its highest across the years we hold; revenue is from all sources. Only grantees confirmed against their own filings, whose grants do not exceed their revenue, are plotted: the largest 8.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Verizon FoundationThe Andrew W Mellon F…Enterprise Holdings F…The Bank of America C…American Online Givin…Donor Advised Charita…Fidelity Investments …Amazonsmile Foundation
Verizon FoundationNJ13.7× affinity5 shared granteesties to 7 of 7Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Verizon Foundation · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

Compare Best Friends Foundation with peer funders

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Best Friends Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Best Friends 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.

About Best Friends Foundation

How much does Best Friends Foundation give?
Best Friends Foundation reported 19 grants totaling $31,805 in its FY2023 IRS filing. It funded between 14 and 25 organizations a year over FY2021 to FY2023.
What does Best Friends Foundation fund?
By grant dollars over FY2021 to FY2023, its largest causes are Education (100%).
Who are Best Friends Foundation's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2021 to FY2023: Carson Scholars Fund Inc ($18k), Trinity College ($13k), Kent State University ($4k).
Does Best Friends Foundation fund new organizations?
In FY2023, 32% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Which funders back the same organizations as Best Friends Foundation?
Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Verizon Foundation, The Andrew W Mellon Foundation, Enterprise Holdings Foundation.
Where is Best Friends Foundation based?
Best Friends Foundation is based in DC.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 31 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its 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.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports $113k of grant expense with no grantee named in the published copy. A private foundation itemizes every grant it makes, so a return carrying none has filed its list as an attachment that the public copy does not include. The figures above are therefore from FY2023, the most recent year this funder’s grantee list reached the public record.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Best Friends’ filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home