How much did BUFFETT EARLY CHILDHOOD FUND grant in FY2025?

A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 56% of BUFFETT EARLY CHILDHOOD FUND’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.

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

birthbenefitelnchildreneducare omaha

2019

studyissueschildren'selneducare omaha

2020

membershipelneducare omaha

2021

communicationsresearchengagementsave children

2022

breakthroughsave childrenpolicy

2023

conveningworkforceconferencechildrenecfcsummitdata

2025

futureschild caresocialpolicy

Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.

03FY2025 · 42 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k8 grants · $16k
$10k–50k3 grants · $60k
$50k–250k13 grants · $1.9M
$250k+18 grants · $31M

$200,000

Median grant

States reached

$8.0M

Total assets

Largest grants

NEBRASKA CHILDREN & FAMILIES FOUNDATION$3,995,063
NEBRASKA EARLY CHILDHOOD COLLABORATIVE$3,954,169
START EARLY$3,746,504
EDUCARE OF OMAHA INC$3,717,994
EARLY CHILDHOOD IMPACT GROUP$3,608,022
ALLIANCE FOR EARLY SUCCESS$3,000,000
EDUCARE OF LINCOLN$2,188,943
EARLY FUTURES PARTNERSHIP$1,783,800
PRESIDENT & FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE$1,000,453
TSNE$860,000
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL$772,679
EDUCARE OF WASHINGTON DC$711,866
PROJECT HARMONY CHILD ADVOCACY CENTER$498,561
NEXT DOOR FOUNDATION INC$425,000
TEACHERS COLLEGE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY$300,000

02The need

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:

Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $20.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 6% — the area typically sits at 10%. 11% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Your grants skew toward lower-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.

95%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$290M · 68 repeat orgs$15M to everyone else

68 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2025, 43 since wound down; 17 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$290M

$6.6M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+51%

+54%

Still filing today

59%

62%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8.9M went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EducationHuman ServicesPhilanthropyPublic BenefitArts & CultureSocial ScienceOther

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

NE
NEBRASKA EARLY CHILDHOOD COLLABORATIVE
7× · 2019–2025 · $41M · revenue +51% · 59% of their budget
START EARLY
9× · 2017–2025 · $38M · revenue +141%
NC
NEBRASKA CHILDREN & FAMILIES FOUNDATION
9× · 2017–2025 · $33M · revenue +186%

Funded once

BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER INCgraduated
one grant, 2019 · $1.5M · revenue +63%
OP
OMAHA PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION
one grant, 2019 · $1.4M · revenue -74%
BO
BOARD OF REGENTS OF UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA
one grant, 2023 · $899k

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.

North Carolina Partnership for

Advance a high quality, comprehensive, accountable early childhood system that benefits each child in north carolina beginning with a healthy birth.

Education

Educare of Lincoln Inc

Early childhood center that provides all-day, year-round care and education for economically disadvantaged children from birth to age five.

Education

Educare Dc

To eliminate the opportunity gap with high-quality early learning for children prenatal to age 5.

Human Services

Catalyst for Educational Change

Catalyst for educational change (cec) is a nonprofit consulting agency that works with adult leaders in solving complex problems in educational systems. cec uses continuous improvement practices and deep collaboration to help educational…

Education

Child Care Associates

To assist family successes through excellence in comprehensive child care and development services.

—

Children's Council of San Francisco

Since 1974, Children's Council has been at the heart of early care and education in San Francisco.

Human Services

Minnesota Child Care Resource and

To provide statewide leadership in shaping collaborations that collectively build a diverse, high quality child care system accessible to all minnesota families through partnership with and in support of local child care resource and…

Human Services

Partners in Child Development Inc

Nurturing the growth and potential of every child.

Human Services

Yes Every Kid Inc

yes. every kid. is a leading advocacy team with a families-first approach to transform America's education policy landscape.

—

Collaborative for Children

To build resources for early chilhood education in the region.

Human Services

The Center for Early Education

An independent, co-educational, day school for a diverse group of children, toddler through 6th grade.

Education

Whole Child Collaborative

To provide a holistic, multidisciplinary education to learners of all abilities

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Center for Families Learning and the most unlike its peers is Start Early. 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.

the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side

Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 33 years old; the field is 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 15% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 7% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

0.0%0/93

the rest of the field

925/14,019

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.

05the grantee network

89 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

85/89

Grantees still filing

66/89

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$172,213,472Education$54,504,015Philanthropy$42,854,323Human Services$26,418,808Recreation & Sports$4,377,770Crime & Legal$3,169,353Public Benefit$2,198,111

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.

Pritzker Family FoundationIL28.5× affinity11 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Pritzker Family Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · The Sherwood Foundation · Annie E Casey Foundation Inc · The Lozier Foundation · William and Ruth Scott Family Foundation · Start Early · The Holland Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · The Heising-Simons Foundation · Gates Foundation · Alliance for Early Success Fka

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 BUFFETT EARLY CHILDHOOD 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

’20’21’22’23’24

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

5get no government money at all

0rely on government for over half their income

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: PIE FOR PROVIDERS.

Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk

Financial management

insufficient risk

Limited financial data in public filings.

Track record & reputation

medium risk

3 years of Form 990 filings, still active.

Legal standing

low risk

US 501(c)(3); EIN 852587281 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 PIE FOR PROVIDERS, 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 contracted over the period.
WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 65% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
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 Buffett Early Childhood Fund?

Find your warmest path to Buffett Early Childhood Fund 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.

BUFFETT EARLY CHILDHOOD FUND

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

89 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to Buffett Early Childhood Fund?

More from the funding graph

BUFFETT EARLY CHILDHOOD FUND

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

89 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to Buffett Early Childhood Fund?

More from the funding graph