· Public charity
Calyx Institute
The Calyx Institute's purposes are 1) to develop the best practices standards for privacy, security and free speech in the telecommunications industry and on the Internet; and 2) Educating the general public and service providers on privacy, security and free speech practices.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Distributed Denial of Secrets | $50,000 |
| Sunset Spark | $25,000 |
| Muslim Justic League | $20,000 |
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 (FY22–22, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 6% of Calyx Institute’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 +73% since the first grant, against +36% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 2 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, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $45k 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
- DDDISTRIBUTED DENIAL OF SECRETS4× · 2021–2024 · $107k · revenue +25% · 64% of their budget
- A1ARTICLE 19 INC2× · 2021–2022 · $25k · revenue +78%
- STSURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY OVERSIGHT PROJECT INC2× · 2021–2022 · $16k · revenue +73%
Funded once
- DPDEMAND PROGRESS EDUCATION FUNDgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $65k · revenue +28%
- BIBLACKS IN CYBERSECURITY HEADQUARTERS INCORPERATEDone grant, 2023 · $54k
- RTRESTORE THE FOURTH INCone grant, 2022 · $20k
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.
Brave New Software is dedicated to keeping the Internet open and decentralized. We build open source software tools that helps users access an uncensored internet, and create a more open and protected information infrastructure for us all.
Advocating for public policies that advance democratic values in the digital age.
Epic's mission is to secure the fundamental right to privacy in the digital age for all people through advocacy, research, and litigation.
Discourse labs provides research-backed tools and resources for productive public dialogue. we believe people should have the tools, technology, and skills to engage in productive public dialogue using credible information.
The Freenet Project develops and maintains free, open-source software that enables decentralized communication and information sharing, with the goal of promoting privacy, freedom of expression, and access to information for the public…
See Schedule OThe mission of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Inc. ("EFF") is to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world.
At freedom of the press foundation (fpf), our mission is to protect and defend press freedom in the 21st century. we do this through:1.) public advocacy on issues affecting press freedom, including government transparency, the right to…
Upturn advances equity and justice in the design, governance, and use of technology.
Digital rights foundation is a registered research-based advocacy non-governmental organization focusing on information and communication technologies (icts) to support democratic processes and digital governance.
Using legal advocacy to make advances in science and technology safer for people and the planet.
The democracy integrity project (tdip) is a 501(c)4 nonprofit that provides research on matters of public interest to government entities, media, and other nonprofits to educate the public on matters such as foreign election interference,…
The world privacy forum is dedicated to reimaging privacy in a digital era through ground-breaking, in-depth privacy research and consumer education of the highest quality. our vision is to empower people with the knowledge, rights, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Demand Progress Education Fund and the most unlike its peers is Sunset Spark Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 19 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 DISTRIBUTED DENIAL OF SECRETS ↗
- Who funds DEMAND PROGRESS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds ARTICLE 19 INC ↗
- Who funds SUNSET SPARK INC ↗
- Who funds MUSLIM JUSTICE LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY OVERSIGHT PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds THEOREM MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds EROTIC SERVICE PROVIDER LEGAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds SUPERBLOOM DESIGN ↗
- Who funds THE WATERSHED CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LUCY PARSONS LABS ↗
- Who funds Independent Arts & Media ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR EMERGING FUTURES INC ↗
- Who funds DEFENDING RIGHTS AND DISSENT INC ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR THE CITY OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds THE TOR PROJECT 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 Ford Foundation · New Venture Fund · Proteus Fund Inc · Borealis Philanthropy · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Tides Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 organization Calyx Institute 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.
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 Calyx Institute?
Find your warmest path to Calyx Institute 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.