· Public charity
Burton Family Foundation
Guided by a belief in the inherent dignity of all individuals, our mission is to advance individual achievement through support for education and human services programs and initiatives.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 148 grants below total $10,453,352 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $10,701,066 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $247,714 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $92k
- $10k–50k86 grants · $1.6M
- $50k–250k36 grants · $3.2M
- $250k+13 grants · $5.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEACH FOR AMERICA | $1,060,000 |
| LOCAL FIRST ARIZONA FOUNDATION | $685,000 |
| VALLEYWISE HEALTH FOUNDATION | $600,000 |
| THE ASPEN INSTITUTE | $405,000 |
| THE WELCOME TO AMERICA PROJECT | $400,000 |
| SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE & THE PUBLIC | $381,250 |
| BARROW NEUROLOGICAL FOUNDATION | $375,000 |
| ARIZONA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $339,500 |
| DONORSCHOOSEORG | $300,000 |
| CENTER FOR THE FUTURE OF ARIZONA | $300,000 |
| ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $285,000 |
| ARIZONA JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $250,000 |
| CRANE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $250,000 |
| READ BETTER BE BETTER | $220,000 |
| ROSIE'S HOUSE A MUSIC ACADEMY FOR CHILDREN | $215,000 |
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, $3.8M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of Burton Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +8% since the first grant, against +0% for the ones you funded once.
87 repeat relationships — 61 still active in FY2025, 26 since wound down; 86 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.4M 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
- SFSOCIETY FOR SCIENCE & THE PUBLIC9× · 2017–2025 · $2.4M · revenue +353%
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY9× · 2017–2025 · $1.6M · revenue +196%
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC8× · 2017–2025 · $1.5M · revenue +243%
Funded once
- CUCreighton Universityone grant, 2024 · $805k · revenue +9%
- YOYMCA OF SOUTHERN ARIZONAone grant, 2022 · $500k · revenue -20%
- VEVELA EDUCATION FUNDone grant, 2023 · $360k · revenue +2%
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.
Az wins is a coalition of organizations dedicated to achieving public policies that benefit working arizona families and advancing an inclusive, engaged, just and equitable state for all arizonans. in 2024 az wins substantially reduced its…
The arizona center for afterschool excellence is dedicated to the enhancement of child and youth development and educational achievement through quality afterschool programming.
Arizona Forward brings business and civic leaders together to promote cooperative efforts to improve the environmental sustainability and economic vitality of our state and local regions.
Pro-Choice Arizona centers abolition and reproductive justice values to prioritize community needs. We advance reproductive equity, pregnancy and family justice, and abortion access for all folks living in Arizona through direct service…
To connect and strengthen arizona's technology industry and community, promote state and federal policies that enhance arizona's technology industry, deliver quality content and events to educate those working in arizona's expanding…
Arizona ball charter schools provides a personalized education to all students emphasizing comprehensive academic excellence in a safe, nurturing environment through partnering parents, students and staff.
CORAZÓN-AZ's mission is to cultivate and foster a welcoming and safe community of Arizonans from vast faith traditions and beliefs, schools, and allied organizations; united in expanding our democracy, economic dignity, immigrant justice,…
Arizona youth partnership, (azyp), empowers youth to harness their strengths to live healthy and purposeful lives.
To promote higher business standards and advancement of common interest of its members, to improve business conditions in the metro phoenix area, to promote economic, social, and cultural development and the role of spanish speaking…
Our mission is to educate and inform public discourse and civic participation in arizona through local, independent journalism.
Opportunity arizona is an issue advocacy organization whose mission is to grow more opportunities and improve the quality of life for hard-working arizonans.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona and the most unlike its peers is Leadership Consortium. 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 24 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 28% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
251 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. 251 of the 284 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE & THE PUBLIC ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds LOCAL FIRST ARIZONA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE WELCOME TO AMERICA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VALLEYWISE HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DONORSCHOOSEORG ↗
- Who funds STEP STUDENT EXPEDITION PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY ↗
- Who funds CAMP CATANESE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUTH WORLD EDUCATION PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Creighton University ↗
- Who funds BARROW NEUROLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Rosies House A Music Academy for Children Inc ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR THE FUTURE OF ARIZONA ↗
- Who funds READ BETTER BE BETTER ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA WESTERN COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YEAR UP INC ↗
- Who funds ACHIEVEMENT REWARDS FOR COLLEGE SCIENTISTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ACT ONE ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF SOUTHERN ARIZONA ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds BE A LEADER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PORTABLE PRACTICAL EDUCATIONAL PREPARATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Launch Pad Teen Center ↗
- Who funds New Pathways For Youth ↗
- Who funds PICOR CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HA P I ↗
- Who funds VELA EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds FRESH START WOMEN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PHOENIX PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA CENTER FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE SUCCESS ↗
- Who funds AFC PUBLIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AZ IMPACT FOR GOOD ↗
- Who funds DIOCESAN COUNCIL FOR THE SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL DIOCESE PHOENIX ↗
- Who funds MARICOPA COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
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: Arizona Community Foundation · Virginia G Piper Charitable Trust · Thunderbirds Charities · The Diane and Bruce Halle Foundation · Community Foundation for Southern Arizona · The Foundation for Community and Health Advancement · John F Long Foundation Inc · Margaret T Morris Foundation · Valley of the Sun United Way · Fiesta Events Inc · Phoenix Suns Charities Inc · Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust
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 Burton 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.
- Year Up Inc — 0% 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 Burton Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Burton Family 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.