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· Private foundation
BRUCE & LOIS FORBES CHARITABLE
This foundation accepts unsolicited grant applications.
$4k
Granted FY2021
3
Grants
1
Communities
$3k
Largest
01What you fund
0171% classified
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2021.
Education$65kRecreation & Sports$900Human Services$450Other$27k
02beneath the categories
Past the labels — and the year it shifted
Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.
…and in their own words, year by year
2018
scholarship
2019
valleyscholarship
2020
—
2021
—
Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2021 · 3 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
$1,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$285
Total assets
Largest grants
- JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY$2,500
- EASTERN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY$1,000
- BLUE RIDGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE$200
02The need
04
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 (FY17–21) land where the poverty rate runs at 24% — the area typically sits at 11%. 79% of your dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
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 line in 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your edge
repeat funding
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.
89%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$83k · 6 repeat orgs$10k to everyone else
6 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2021, 4 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Re-uppedFunded once
Organizations
6
10
Total granted
$83k
$10k
Median revenue growth · since first grant
-3%
+35%
Still filing today
67%
40%
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2021, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $200 went to new ones.
RenewedFirst-time
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
EducationHuman ServicesRecreation & SportsOther
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
- JMJAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION4× · 2017–2020 · $60k · revenue -4%
- JMJAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY4× · 2017–2021 · $10k
- EMEASTERN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY4× · 2018–2021 · $6k · revenue -3%
Funded once
- JMJAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY DUKE CLUBone grant, 2017 · $4k
- EMEASTERN MENNONITE SCHOOLgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $3k · revenue +35%
- VFVALLEY FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTEN ATHLEone grant, 2019 · $1k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
04Your 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
Elizabethtown College
Provide a transformative educational experience that cultivates strengths of its students.
Education
2
Eastern University
Eastern University is a diverse, Christ-centered community preparing graduates to impact the world through faith, reason, and justice.
Education
3
Marymount Manhattan College
Marymount manhattan college is an urban, independent, liberal arts college (see schedule o).
Education
4
Elmhurst University
Elmhurst university inspires intellectual and personal growth in our (continued in schedule o) students, preparing them for meaningful and ethical contributions to a diverse, global society.form 990, part v, line 1a:the total on this line…
—
5
Christian Brothers University
Christian brothers university is a private, catholic comprehensive university committed to preparing students of all faiths and backgrounds to excel in their professional and public lives by providing challenging educational opportunities…
Education
6
Franklin & Marshall College
A residential college dedicated to excellence in undergraduate liberal arts education.
Education
7
Lincoln Memorial University
Lincoln memorial university is a values-based learning community dedicated to providing educational experiences in the liberal arts and professional studies.
Education
8
Emerson College
To educate students to become leaders in communication and the arts (continued on schedule o)and to advance scholarship and creative work that brings innovation, depth and diversity to these disciplines.
Education
9
Allegheny College
Four year institution of higher education.
Education
10
Hope College
The mission of hope college is to educate students for lives of leadership and service in a global society through academic and co-curricular programs of recognized excellence in the liberal arts and in the context of the historic…
Education
11
Meredith College
Founded in 1891, meredith is one of the largest women's colleges in the southeast. meredith offers comprehensive liberal arts and professional studies for undergraduate women. at the graduate level, meredith offers co-educational mba,…
Education
12
Wartburg College
Wartburg college provides educational programs and experiences that challenge and nurture students for lives of leadership and service as a spirited expression of their faith and learning.
Education
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grandfather Home for Children Inc and the most unlike its peers is Special Olympics Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
05the grantee network
8 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2024.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
8/8
Grantees still filing
3/8
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Education$64,500Other$27,450Recreation & Sports$900Human Services$450
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.
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.
Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation IncGA13.8× affinity4 shared granteesties to 7 of 7Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Harrisonburg · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 organisation BRUCE & LOIS FORBES CHARITABLE 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
’20’21’22’23’24
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–40%
typical government reliance, FY20–24
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. 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.
05Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
insufficient risk
Limited financial data in public filings.
Track record & reputation
low risk
6 years of Form 990 filings, still active.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 237156305 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- Awaiting reportFinancial stability— Runway not derivable from filings.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2023; revenue held over the period.
- On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 0% of their budget — diversified.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Bruce & Lois Forbes Charitable?
Find your warmest path to Bruce & Lois Forbes Charitable through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines