· Private foundation
David and Mary Sterling Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Notre Dame Church | $2,000 |
| Mercy Home for Boys and Girls | $900 |
| Salvation Army | $800 |
| Tunnels To Towers Foundation | $500 |
| Boys Town | $500 |
| Turning Point USA | $500 |
| St Jude Childrens Research Hospital | $500 |
| Catholic Charities | $400 |
| Misericordia | $200 |
| Pacific Garden Mission | $200 |
| Feeding America | $200 |
| Veterans of Foreign Wars | $100 |
| St Josephs Indian School | $100 |
| Harry S Truman Library Institute | $100 |
| USO Inc | $100 |
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 (FY20–25, $3k) 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.
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 +29% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100 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
Chicago Zoological Society5× · 2020–2024 · $6k · revenue +80%
ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC6× · 2020–2025 · $3k · revenue +78%- FFFather Flanagan's Boys' Home6× · 2020–2025 · $3k · revenue +26%
Funded once
- PMPontifical Mission Societiesone grant, 2022 · $200
- SASalvation Army USAone grant, 2020 · $200
- RMRonald McDonald House Globalgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100 · revenue +82%
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 institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
Chartered by a unanimous act of congress, the museum is america's national institution for the documentation, study, interpretation, and education of holocaust history and serves as our country's memorial to the victims of the holocaust.…
The fund for american studies (tfas) seeks to create a brighter, more prosperous future by preparing young people for leadership and teaching them the ideas of freedom and a free-market economy. founded in 1967, tfas organizes programs for…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
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.
As the national university of the catholic church in the united states, founded and sponsored by the bishops of the country with the approval of the holy see, the catholic university of america is committed to being a comprehensive…
The national wwii museum tells the story of the american experience in the war that changed the world-why it was fought, how it was won, and what it means today-so that all generations will understand the price of freedom and be inspired…
The gilder lehrman institute of american history was founded in 1994 by richard gilder and lewis e. lehrman, visionaries and lifelong supporters of american history. the institute is the leading nonprofit and nonpartisan organization…
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
To prepare principled leaders for faith-informed public service.
The ronald reagan presidential foundation and institute is the sole nonprofit organization created by president reagan charged with advancing his legacy and principles: individual liberty, economic opportunity, freedom and democracy, peace…
The national september 11 memorial & museum at the world trade center bears solemn witness to the terrorist attacks of september 11, 2001, and february 26, 1993. located at a site made sacred through loss, the memorial & museum remembers…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Turning Point Usa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Carmelite Sistershome for Girls. 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 63 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 40 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 Chicago Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds CARMELITE SISTERSHOME FOR GIRLS ↗
- Who funds Father Flanagan's Boys' Home ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT USA INC ↗
- Who funds Colonial Williamsburg Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE FORT TICONDEROGA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE MOUNT VERNON LADIES' ASSOCIATION OF THE UNION ↗
- Who funds ADMIRAL NIMITZ FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The American Legion ↗
- Who funds PARALYZED VETERANS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds THOMAS JEFFERSON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Global ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CORNERSTONE INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS 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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 David and Mary Sterling Foundation Inc 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.