· Private foundation
Breakthrough Prize Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What it funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2025.
Where the money goes
Grants by size, and the largest recipients.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k5 grants · $114k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.1M
- $250k+8 grants · $12M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE (IRC) | $1,570,000 |
| MILKY WAY RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $1,225,271 |
| MILKY WAY RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $1,125,025 |
| AIRBNBORG | $1,000,000 |
| MILKY WAY RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $466,881 |
| Individual grant recipient | $250,000 |
| ARID1B RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC | $150,000 |
| NEEV ACADEMY | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
Does the money reach high-need areas?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.
Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY21–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 86% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
How this is measured
Which US states its grants reach
How this is measured
Where the work is directed
The same grants placed two ways: where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose sends the money.
About 11% of Breakthrough Prize Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address. By recipient address, 66% of the giving stays in DC; by stated purpose, 64%.
How this is measured
Who it funds again
Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.
Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +78% since the first grant, against +16% for those funded once.
12 repeat relationships: 3 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 22 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, 42% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7.5M went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
How this is measured
Backed again, and grew
- MWMILKY WAY RESEARCH FOUNDATION5× · 2021–2025 · $64M · revenue +78% · 100% of their budget
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES3× · 2022–2024 · $5.4M · revenue +29%- KAKHAN ACADEMY INC3× · 2021–2024 · $400k · revenue +98%
Funded once
UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEFone grant, 2024 · $4.0M · revenue +16%- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesone grant, 2022 · $3.0M · revenue +23%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $3.0M
How this is measured
Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
Closest unfunded matches
The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
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…
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.
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.…
Our mission is to break down barriers to als research to find effective treatments. by uniting academia, the pharma and biotech industry, government, venture capital, related nonprofits, and the als community, we aim to overcome the…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
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…
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The principal objects of the University are the advancement of learning by teaching and research, and its dissemination by every means. We work as one Oxford bringing together our staff, students and alumni, our colleges, faculties,…
The weizmann institute of science, located in rehovot, israel, is one of the worlds top-ranking, multidisciplinary research institutions. at any one time, several thousand scientists, staff and students are involved in hundreds of research…
How this is measured
17 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.
How this is measured
Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 17 of the 495 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.
Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee
Showing the 200 largest grantees by grant value.
Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding
A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds MILKY WAY RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AIRBNBORG INC ↗
- Who funds CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds American Friends of Tel Aviv Univ ↗
- Who funds KHAN ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds Social Impact Fund ↗
How much its grantees rely on government
Each dot is one organization Breakthrough Prize Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Breakthrough Prize Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 35% of income from government
How this is measured
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Breakthrough Prize Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Breakthrough Prize 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.
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