· Private foundation
Burnham Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $676k
- $50k–250k17 grants · $1.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEW CITY PARKS INC | $200,000 |
| BILLION OYSTER PROJECT | $155,499 |
| LIGHTHOUSE WORKS INC | $155,499 |
| LIGHTHOUSE WORKS INC | $120,804 |
| ARCHITECTURAL LEAGUE OF NEW YORK | $100,907 |
| TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND | $100,000 |
| WALSH PARK BENEVOLENT CORPORATION | $100,000 |
| TEACHING MATTERS INC | $98,996 |
| NEW STORY INC | $98,697 |
| TEACHING LAB | $98,697 |
| EARTHJUSTICE | $74,154 |
| FREE AND FAIR LITIGATION GROUP INC | $73,931 |
| NATURAL AREAS CONSERVANCY INC | $60,402 |
| THE ACADEMY IN MANAYUNK INC | $50,000 |
| CAMBIAR EDUCATION | $50,000 |
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 (FY23–24, $144k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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.
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 +21% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 29 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, 34% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.5M 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
- TLTHE LIGHTHOUSE WORKS INC2× · 2023–2024 · $357k · revenue +1% · 26% of their budget
- BOBILLION OYSTER PROJECT INC2× · 2023–2024 · $228k · revenue +55%
- NVNEW VISIONS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS INC2× · 2023–2024 · $150k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- OSOPEN SPACE INSTITUTE INCone grant, 2023 · $101k · revenue +17%
- WFWIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2023 · $21k · revenue +14%
- NYNEW YORK MUSIC FESTIVALone grant, 2018 · $10k
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 open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
See schedule onylcvef's mission is to educate, engage and empower new yorkers to be effective advocates on behalf of the environment from clean energy and funding for parks, to solid waste and green buildings. first, we educate new yorkers…
See schedule onylcv is a non-partisan policy making and political action organization that works to make environmental protection a top priority with elected officials, decision-makers and the voters by evaluating incumbent performance and…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
CITY REPORT, INC. serves the people of New York through independent journalism that answers their information needs and holds the powerful to account.
Open new york education, inc. supports public education, awareness, and engagement around housing issues to help build a movement for a more abundant and inclusive new york.
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,…
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
The conservancy preserves and revitalizes new york's architecture. by doing so, it contributes to new york's economy, tourism and quality of life.
The american enterprise institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. aei pursues these ideals through independent thinking and the…
New york restoration project ("nyrp") believes that nature is a fundamental right of every new yorker. nyrp works collaboratively with residents in communities across the five boroughs to renovate gardens, restore parks, plant trees,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New Visions for Public Schools Inc and the most unlike its peers is Walsh Park Benevolent Corporation. 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 32 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
47 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. 47 of the 49 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 FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds VANGUARD CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds THE LIGHTHOUSE WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds BILLION OYSTER PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds NEW CITY PARKS INC ↗
- Who funds NEW VISIONS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds DYSLEXIA ALLIANCE FOR BLACK CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds THE ARCHITECTURAL LEAGUE OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds OPEN SPACE INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds WALSH PARK BENEVOLENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds TEACHING MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds TEACHING LAB ↗
- Who funds NEW STORY INC ↗
- Who funds LITERACY INC ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds FREE AND FAIR LITIGATION GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds NATURAL AREAS CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds CAMBIAR EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY IN MANAYUNK ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Electronic Frontier Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds EL EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATES NY INC ↗
- Who funds FARMLINK PROJECT ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Newtown Creek Alliance Incorporated ↗
- Who funds WIKIMEDIA ENDOWMENT ↗
- Who funds OPEN SPACE INSTITUTE LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds LEARNING THROUGH AN EXPANDED ARTS PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds Henry L Ferguson Museum ↗
- Who funds THE FUND FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds CARY INSTITUTE OF ECOSYSTEM STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds NEW PROFIT INC ↗
- Who funds ECHOING GREEN INC ↗
- Who funds FFWD ↗
- Who funds WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEW YORK COMMUNITY TRUST ↗
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 New York Community Trust · Jewish Communal Fund · Robin Hood Foundation · Lily Auchincloss Foundation Inc · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · The Hyde and Watson Foundation · Pinkerton Foundation · New Venture Fund · The Jm Kaplan Fund Inc · Community Foundation of New Jersey · Gates Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett 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 Burnham Family Foundation 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 Sound — 37% 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.