· Public charity
Cato Institute
The mission of the CATO INSTITUTE is to keep the principles, ideas, and moral case for liberty alive for future generations, while moving public policy in the direction of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
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.
The 8 grants below total $227,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $232,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $5,000 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
- $10k–50k6 grants · $117k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $110k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICA'S FUTURE FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| ROOTS OF PROGRESS | $50,000 |
| AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL | $34,000 |
| CENTER FOR CIVIL SOCIETY | $25,000 |
| STUDENTS FOR LIBERTY | $20,500 |
| YOUNG AMERICANS FOR LIBERTY INC | $15,000 |
| ONE AMERICA MOVEMENT | $12,500 |
| YOUNG AMERICANS FOR LIBERTY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
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 (FY22–25, $300k) land where the poverty rate runs at 18%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 83% 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 19% of Cato 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 +22% since the first grant, against -12% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 4 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, 55% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $103k 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
- FTFREE TO CHOOSE NETWORK INC2× · 2017–2018 · $155k · revenue +13%
- TBTHE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION4× · 2020–2024 · $85k · revenue +46%
- YCYORK COLLEGE OF PENNSYLVANIA2× · 2023–2024 · $83k · revenue +7%
Funded once
- TITHE INNOCENCE PROJECT INCone grant, 2022 · $250k · revenue -12%
- CACuban American National Foundation Incone grant, 2019 · $250k · revenue -47%
- LFLiberty Fund Incgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $28k · revenue +263%
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 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…
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.
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
To provide accurate, objective information and analysis on international strategic issues for legislators, diplomats, foreign affairs analysts, international business leaders, economists, the military, defense commentators, journalists,…
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
The manhattan institute is a community of scholars, journalists, activists, and civic leaders dedicated to advancing opportunity, individual liberty, and the rule of law in america and its great cities.
To advance economic and social liberties and a free enterprise society through strategic litigation, training, communication, activism and research. in addition, the center will train law students, lawyers and policy activists in the…
Iri advances freedom and democracy worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, democratic governance and the rule of law.
To educate the public on constitutional issues and public policy matters. We are dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, peace through strength, limited government, free enterprise, and the values embodied in the Declaration of…
Competitive enterprise institute (cei) is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. we believe that consumers are best helped not by government regulation but by being…
The institute's mission, as set out in its certificate of incorporation, is to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to…
We inspire college students to discover, embrace, and advance the principles that make america good, free, and prosperous.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Young Americans for Liberty Inc and the most unlike its peers is Liberty Fund Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 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 THE INNOCENCE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Cuban American National Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds FREE TO CHOOSE NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds America's Future Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds YORK COLLEGE OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds MORAL COURAGE PROJECT F/K/A PROJECT IJTIHAD ↗
- Who funds STUDENTS FOR LIBERTY INC ↗
- Who funds THE ROOTS OF PROGRESS ↗
- Who funds Liberty Fund Inc ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AMERICANS FOR LIBERTY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMIC RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AMERICANS FOR LIBERTY INC ↗
- Who funds THE ONE AMERICA MOVEMENT ↗
- Who funds INTERNET EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Donors Trust 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: Donors Trust Inc · Charles Koch Institute · The Seminar Network Inc · Triad Foundation Inc · Charles Koch Foundation · JP Humphreys Foundation · The Armstrong Foundation · Atlas Economic Research Foundation · John Templeton Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc
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 Cato 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.