· Public charity
Borealis Philanthropy
BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY directs resources to people building powerful, thriving communities that serve all of us, with those most impacted by injustice leading the way.
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.
The 360 grants below total $37,308,475 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $40,129,865 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $2,821,390 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k18 grants · $125k
- $10k–50k101 grants · $2.1M
- $50k–250k217 grants · $26M
- $250k+24 grants · $9.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS | $1,283,000 |
| SOCIAL GOOD FUND | $988,000 |
| HISPANICS IN PHILANTHROPY | $558,000 |
| HIGHLANDER RESEARCH AND EDUCATION CENTER | $529,000 |
| ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS | $452,400 |
| FUNDERS FOR LGBTQ ISSUES | $329,000 |
| TIDES CENTER | $329,000 |
| THE KNIGHTS & ORCHIDS SOCIETY | $321,000 |
| MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND | $304,000 |
| BEYOND THE BARS | $300,000 |
| SOLIDAIRE NETWORK | $300,000 |
| EQUITY IN THE CENTER | $294,000 |
| TRANSGENDER LAW CENTER | $289,000 |
| ASSOCIATION OF BLACK FOUNDATION EXECUTIVES | $279,000 |
| NATIVE AMERICANS IN PHILANTHROPY | $279,000 |
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, $24.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 87% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Borealis Philanthropy’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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +46% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
459 repeat relationships — 243 still active in FY2024, 216 since wound down; 111 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7.2M 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
- SASOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC8× · 2017–2024 · $6.2M · revenue +490%
Asian AmericansPacific Islanders in Philanthropy Inc6× · 2018–2024 · $3.0M · revenue +24% · 63% of their budget
HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC6× · 2019–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +132%
Funded once
- GUGuideStar USA Incone grant, 2018 · $300k · revenue -91%
- NMNEW MEXICO IMMIGRANT LAW CENTERgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $265k · revenue +174%
- ASASYLUM SEEKER ADVOCACY PROJECT INCone grant, 2020 · $250k · revenue +13%
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.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
The National Legal Advocacy Network d/b/a Grassroots Law & Organizing for Workers is a legal non-profit organization dedicated to using legal strategies as a tool to build power for marginalized workers and create systemic change through…
Fund for Justice is a nationally connected social impact research and advocacy organization that works to achieve fundamental, systemic reform by addressing policies and practicies that prevent individuals from reaching their full…
The Equal Justice Center is a non-profit law firm and employment justice organization which empowers low-income families, workers, and communities to achieve fair treatment in the workplace, in the justice system, and in our shared society…
Queer Power Alliance is rooted in the LGBTQIA+ community and in solidarity with other marginalized communities. We strive for equity by disrupting systems of oppression holding back LGBTQIA+ communities through advocating, educating,…
Fuerza Laboral is a workers' rights center whose mission is to shift the balance of power in our economy in favor of workers by educating, training, and organizing workers to become community leaders; taking direct action to recover unpaid…
Oregon Justice Network is an alliance built and staffed by criminal legal system impacted people advocating for the well-being of people affected or at-risk of being affected by carceral systems. Our work centers around restorative…
AMOR is an alliance of community based grassroots organizations mobilizing at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status to prevent, to respond to, and to end state violence against our community.
CIVIL LIBERTIES DEFENSE CENTER (CLDC) educates the general public about their rights and privileges under the US Constitution and provides free legal support to climate and social justice activists.
We are workers, united across different industries to improve our working conditions and our lives. We come together as working people to build power through education, organizing, and enforcement. We work to raise and uphold standards in…
We demand health, dignity, and justice for our communities. We center and amplify Latine voices as we work to transform oppressive systems and narratives and to reclaim control over our bodies and lives. We build power by organizing our…
The international institute on race, equality and human rights contributes to the promotion and defense of human rights, through training, technical assistance, advocacy, and strategic litigation conducted at the regional and international…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Voices of Community Activists & Leaders (Vocal-Ny) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Voice News Network. 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 13 years old; the field is 16. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 11% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
824 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. 824 of the 937 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Asian AmericansPacific Islanders in Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE PRAXIS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION OF BLACK FOUNDATION EXECUTIVES INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR RESPONSIVE PHILANTHROPY ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM INC ↗
- Who funds HISPANICS IN PHILANTHROPY ↗
- Who funds UNITED PHILANTHROPY FORUM ↗
- Who funds Nonprofit Information Networking Association ↗
- Who funds FUNDERS FOR LESBIAN AND GAY ISSUES INC DBA FUNDERS FOR LGBTQ ISSUES ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds BOARDSOURCE ↗
- Who funds Transgender Law Center ↗
- Who funds Native Americans in Philanthropy ↗
- Who funds Women With A Vision ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE YOUTH STUDENT MOVEMENT ↗
- Who funds GRANTMAKERS FOR EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONS ↗
- Who funds ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds MALDEF - MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds THE LEGACY ARTS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds EQUITY IN THE CENTER ↗
- Who funds CFLEADS ↗
- Who funds Poder in Action ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERNERS ON NEW GROUND INC ↗
- Who funds Alliance for Global Justice Corp ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION OF SMALL FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds PEAK GRANTMAKING INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN VISION ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds BYP100 Education Fund ↗
- Who funds AUTISTIC WOMEN AND NONBINARY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds SPARK REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE NOW ↗
- Who funds CANDID ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds THE KNIGHTS & ORCHIDS SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds DANCERS GROUP ↗
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: Groundswell Fund · Proteus Fund Inc · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Solidaire Network Inc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Ms Foundation for Women Inc · The Astraea Foundation Inc · Common Counsel Foundation · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · Solidago Foundation · Marguerite Casey Foundation · Fwdus Education Fund Inc
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 Borealis Philanthropy 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.
- Baltimore Safe Haven Corp — 28% of income from government
- Center for Intercultural Organizing — 28% of income from government
- Justice for Housing Inc — 22% of income from government
- Community Service Care Inc — 10% of income from government
- Chainless Change Inc — 0% of income from government
- Cfleads — 0% 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.