· Public charity
Common Counsel Foundation
COMMON COUNSEL FOUNDATION advances equity and environmental health through a combination of direct grant making and strategic philanthropic advising for client member funds and manages projects focused on organizational development, leadership sustainability, and donor education.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k414 grants · $10M
- $50k–250k160 grants · $13M
- $250k+39 grants · $77M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| IMPACTASSETSINC | $37,233,011 |
| MOVEMENT 4 BLACK LIVES INC | $15,817,927 |
| NATIVE LAND CONSERVANCY INC | $4,000,000 |
| THE ACCOMPLIS COLLECTIVE INC | $2,500,000 |
| NEO PHILANTHROPY INC | $1,500,000 |
| RESIST | $1,100,000 |
| EKVNV YEFOLECVLKE | $1,000,000 |
| FREEDOM ORG | $1,000,000 |
| SOCIAL GOOD FUND | $1,000,000 |
| LIGHTHOUSE HOLYOKE | $1,000,000 |
| NDN COLLECTIVE INC | $750,000 |
| AMALGAMATED CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC | $719,900 |
| CENTER FOR THIRD WORLD ORGANIZING | $540,000 |
| GROUNDSWELL FUND | $500,000 |
| HIGHLANDER RESEARCH AND EDUCATION CENTER INC | $500,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $19.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 92% 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 25% of Common Counsel 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 +15% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
449 repeat relationships — 262 still active in FY2024, 187 since wound down; 156 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; $28M 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
- TATHE ACCOMPLIS COLLECTIVE INC3× · 2022–2024 · $8.7M · revenue +255% · 89% of their budget
Center for Third World Organizing5× · 2020–2024 · $5.9M · revenue +370% · 28% of their budget- NLNATIVE LAND CONSERVANCY INC5× · 2020–2024 · $5.1M · revenue ×87 · 62% of their budget
Funded once
POSSIBILITY LABSgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $371k · revenue ×142 · 98% of their budget- NNNORTHEAST NATIVE NETWORK OF KINSHIP ANDone grant, 2023 · $250k · revenue -44%
- GFGIRLS FOR A CHANGEone grant, 2023 · $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.
To protect the rainforest and advance the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with Indigenous communities in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon Basin's…
Forward Together is a national reproductive justice organization that centers people, families, and communities who experience reproductive oppression. They prioritize queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and other peoples of color and utilize…
Washington Indian Civil Rights Commission is led by and for Indigenous people, and envisions a just society in which we are treated with honor, fairness and respect. Our mission is to uphold our individual civil rights through education…
We are a Native-led Indigenous rights organization. We are dedicated to our mission of protecting & revitalizing Indigenous cultures, empowering them in the direct application of their traditional knowledge & practices on their ancestral…
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
The Asian Law Caucus's mission is to promote, advance, and represent the legal and civil rights of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, recognizing that social, economic, political and racial inequalities continue to exist…
Building Indigenous power through collective action to achieve economic, social and cultural development.
Borderless A Black & Indigenous Collective (B&I Collective Fund) is organized to build the collective power of Black and Indigenous Peoples or underprivileged groups to exercise their inherent right to self-determination, ownership, and…
To lead and coordinate the global initiative to address and prevent criminalization, violence, and impunity against indigenous peoples towards strengthening their collectives, solidarity, and actions.
To empower frontline communities to lead nature-based solutions that advance climate justice, ecosystem restoration, and resilient livelihoods through connecting locally-led initiatives to funding, markets, and technical support.
Advance democracy, equity, and self-determination in U.S. territories through participatory advocacy, narrative and cultural change, and ecosystem building.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Demil Art Fund. 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 14 years old; the field is 16. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 11% of your grantees by number, and just 12% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
829 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. 829 of the 897 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 IMPACTASSETSINC ↗
- Who funds Movement 4 Black Lives Inc ↗
- Who funds THE ACCOMPLIS COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Third World Organizing ↗
- Who funds Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIVE LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds RESIST INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK FARMER FUND INC ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM ORG ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO GO GREEN INC ↗
- Who funds Groundswell Fund ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds EKVNV YEFOLECVLKE ↗
- Who funds ACCE Institute ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds HAYMARKET PEOPLE'S FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ACORN Center For Restoration & Freedom ↗
- Who funds PROTEUS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR EMPOWERED POLITICS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Medicine Bowl Giving Circle Inc ↗
- Who funds RIGHT TO THE CITY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds LIGHTWORKS COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds NDN COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds POWER CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds INQUIRING SYSTEMS INC ↗
- Who funds BOLD TRAINING INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Sonrisas Inc ↗
- Who funds PUEBLO UNIDO CDC ↗
- Who funds DAKOTA RESOURCE COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM INC ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN THE VALLEY ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds ARISE INC ↗
- Who funds SAJE ↗
- Who funds Community Aid and Development Corp ↗
- Who funds VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA ↗
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: Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Solidaire Network Inc · Ndn Collective Inc · Borealis Philanthropy · Groundswell Fund · Novo Foundation · Proteus Fund Inc · First Nations Development Institute · Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples Inc · Rsf Social Finance Inc · Movement Strategy Center · NEO Philanthropy 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 Common Counsel 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.
- Northeast Native Network of Kinship and — 44% of income from government
- Retreat Farm Ltd — 25% of income from government
- The Farm School Inc — 12% of income from government
- Tulsa Community Foundation — 11% of income from government
- Public Justice Center Inc — 5% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- Resist Inc — 2% of income from government
- Sonrisas 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.