· Private foundation
Buffett Early Childhood Fund
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
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
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| 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 |
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 (FY17–25, $30.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 41% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
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 +35% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
63 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2025, 39 since wound down; 15 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.7M 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
START EARLY9× · 2017–2025 · $38M · revenue +114%- NCNEBRASKA CHILDREN & FAMILIES FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $33M · revenue +186%
- EOEDUCARE OF OMAHA INC9× · 2017–2025 · $32M · revenue +186% · 41% of their budget
Funded once
BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $1.5M · revenue +67%- CSCHILD SAVING INSTITUTE INCone grant, 2024 · $280k · revenue 0%
- FBFIRST BOOKone grant, 2024 · $250k · revenue 0%
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.
The Center is dedicated to providing tools the nation needs to lead the world in education & training in a swiftly globalizing world economy.
Child care aware of minnesota was incorporated in 1992 to provide technical assistance, training and coordination for the child care resource and referral programs throughout minnesota, to collect data regarding the supply of and demand…
Children's institute's mission is to leverage research, practice, policy, and advocacy to shift systems toward justice for families so that all of oregon's children, prenatal to grade 5, have access to opportunity.
By advocating for quality early care and education, empowering families with information and financial support, and building the capabilities of educators, Children's Council of San Francisco ensures that every child in San Francisco has…
The north carolina partnership for children (ncpc) is the lead organization and backbone of the smart start network, setting statewide vision, policy, and funding priorities. while local partnerships translate the statewide vision into…
The chicago public education fund (the fund) is a nonprofit organization that improves public schools in chicago by investing in the talented educators who lead them.
To promote innovative solutions to education challenges and inspire action that creates positive, sustainable futures for children and youth worldwide
The mission of education commission of the states is to advocate for attaining educational excellence for all and to help state leaders identify, develop and implement public policy for education that addresses current and future needs of…
To provide educational and therapeutic services, at a professional level, for infants, toddlers and preschool children up to 12 years and their families through supporting the family unit and working with each child to develop his or her…
To create and inspire better ways to give every student an educational foundation for lifelong success. we imagine a world where every student attends a school that meets them where they are, adapts to the unique ways they learn, and…
The center for early education, a socio-economically and culturally diverse independent school for children, toddlers through grade six, strives to graduate students who are joyful, resilient, lifelong learners. the center embraces a…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Nebraska Early Childhood Collaborative and the most unlike its peers is University of Miami. 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 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
100 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. 100 of the 128 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
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 NEBRASKA EARLY CHILDHOOD COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds START EARLY ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA CHILDREN & FAMILIES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EDUCARE OF OMAHA INC ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR EARLY SUCCESS FKA BIRTH TO FIVE POLICY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds EDUCARE OF LINCOLN INC ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds EDUCARE DC ↗
- Who funds EARLY CHILDHOOD SERVICES ↗
- Who funds COMIC RELIEF INC DBA COMIC RELIEF US ↗
- Who funds OMAHA EARLY LEARNING CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds NEXT DOOR FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OMAHA PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds PROJECT HARMONY ↗
- Who funds SPRINGFIELD OPERATIONS ECS INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Teachers College Columbia University ↗
- Who funds University of Miami ↗
- Who funds BRAZELTON TOUCHPOINTS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Erikson Institute ↗
- Who funds KENNEBEC VALLEY COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds Lincoln Community Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Council for a Strong America ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATIONS INC ↗
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: The Sherwood Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · The Lozier Foundation · Pritzker Family Foundation · Annie E Casey Foundation Inc · The Heising-Simons Foundation · Alliance for Early Success Fka Birth to Five Policy Alliance · Weitz Family Foundation · Start Early · The Holland Foundation · Nebraska Community Foundation · Nebraska Children & Families 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 organization 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Reach Out and Read Inc — 9% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- All Our Kin Inc — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Buffett Early Childhood Fund?
Find your warmest path to Buffett Early Childhood Fund 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.