Skip to content
Plinth

· Public charity

Big Tent Project Fund

Educatingthepubliconcurrenteventsandissuessuchashealthcare,tax,energy,andeducationpolicy.

$7.0M
Granted FY2020
8
Grants FY2020
5
States reached
$3.0M
Largest
01What you fund
01FY2020 · 8 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2020

  • $10k–50k1 grant · $25k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
  • $250k+6 grants · $7.0M
$750,000
Median grant
5
States reached
$69k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
CENTER ACTION NOW$2,950,000
THE THIRD WAY FOUNDATION INC$1,250,000
NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CITIZENSHIP$750,000
FOUNDATION FOR SOCIAL IMPACT$750,000
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE$750,000
AZ CENTER FOR EMPOWERMENT$500,000
CITIZENS FOR STRENGTH & SECURITY FUND$50,000
THE WELCOME PARTY$25,000
02The need
02

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:

Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–20) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 93% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%AZ CENTER FOR EMPOWERMENT: $500k → 11%THE WELCOME PARTY: $25k → 16%FOUNDATION FOR SOCIAL IMPACT: $750k → 17%CENTER ACTION NOW: $3.0M → 14%NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE: $750k → 19%CITIZENS FOR STRENGTH & SECURITY FUND: $50k → 14%THE THIRD WAY FOUNDATION INC: $1.3M → 14%NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CITIZENSHIP: $750k → 14%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
Changing the Conversation for Progress Corp

To engage unlikely voters in authentic conversations in order to strengthen democracy and promote justice through the use of deep canvassing.

Civil Rights
2
Center for Equity Effectiveness & Effici

At C3E, we believe strong, resilient communities start with equitable, effective, and efficient governanceour mission is to empower state and local leaders to drive lasting change through organizational transformation and performance…

Public Benefit
3
The Center for Civic Alternatives

The Corporation has been organized to operate for charitable and educational purposes, including, but not limited to, research and educational projects to help citizens, municipalities, state governments, other organizations participate…

Civil Rights
4
Northwest Progressive Institute

The Northwest Progressive Institute is a social welfare organization working to raise everyone's equality of life through insightful research and imaginative advocacy. NPI's projects and publications promote policy development based on…

Civil Rights
5
The National Foundation for American Policy Inc

The national foundation for american policy is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to public policy research on trade, immigration, and other issues of national importance. the organization seeks to expand the debate over the…

Public Benefit
6
Citizens Commission On National Security
Public Benefit
7
Center for Public Enterprise Inc

Improving public sector capacity to reduce the burdens of government.

Public Benefit
8
Citizen Awareness Project Inc

Citizen Awareness Project exists to educate citizens and public officials on issues of public policy and to give them the tools necessary to make a difference in their community on issues affecting the public at large. Specifically, it…

Civil Rights
9
New North Carolina Project Action First Inc

The new north carolina project's mission is to make politics represent the needs of north carolinians by investing in communities of color, expanding the engaged electorate and creating #lifelongvoters.

Civil Rights
10
The Center for Election Innovation & Research

CEIR seeks to restore trust in the American election system and promote election procedures that encourage participation while ensuring election integrity and security.

Civil Rights
11
Fund for States

Fund for states is dedicated to building a democracy that works for every voter. we work with state and local election officials and community organizations to educate the public, combat disinformation, and restore trust in the electoral…

Public Benefit
12
Election Reformers Network Inc

To strengthen democracy in the United States through an assessment of US voting systems and US election administration from the perspective of global best practices.

Civil Rights

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Naacp Empowerment Programs Inc and the most unlike its peers is Citizens for Strength and Security Fund. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

03the 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.

2
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
2
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/8
Grantees still filing
3/8
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

CENTER ACTION NOW — $2,950,000 · Public BenefitCENTER ACTION NOWThe Third Way Foundation Inc — $1,250,000 · OtherThe Third Way Foundation IncNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CITIZENSHIP — $750,000 · OtherNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CITIZENSHIPFoundation for Social Impact — $750,000 · OtherFoundation for Social Impact+2 more — $75,000 · OtherNAACP EMPOWERMENT PROGRAMS INC — $750,000 · Civil RightsNAACP EMPOWERMENT PR…ARIZONA CENTER FOR EMPOWERMENT — $500,000 · Civil RightsARIZONA CENTER FOR E…
Public Benefit$2,950,000Other$2,825,000Civil Rights$1,250,000

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

25%50%75%100%$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetCENTER ACTION NOW — $2,950,000 over 1y, 70% of budgetThe Third Way Foundation Inc — $1,250,000 over 1y, 9.1% of budgetNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CITIZENSHIP — $750,000 over 1y, 11% of budgetFoundation for Social Impact — $750,000 over 1y, 32% of budgetNAACP EMPOWERMENT PROGRAMS INC — $750,000 over 1y, 0.9% of budgetARIZONA CENTER FOR EMPOWERMENT — $500,000 over 1y, 8.3% of budgetTHE WELCOME PARTY INC — $25,000 over 1y, 17% 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.

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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.

Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift FundMA4.7× affinity4 shared granteesties to 0 of 0Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund

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 Big Tent Project Fund 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 20%5%19%42%75%your share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    2get no government money at all
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    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.

    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 8 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 e-file return for fiscal year 2020, released 2020. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2021) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2020, the most recent year this funder made grants.

    Source object · view filing

    More from the funding graph