· Public charity
Defending Democracy Together
To further the common good and general welfare of the citizens of the united states of america by protecting and defending american democratic norms and institutions.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
- $250k+3 grants · $3.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| REPUBLICAN ACCOUNTABILITY PAC INC | $3,000,000 |
| C & B GROUP | $300,000 |
| PRINCIPLES FIRST FOR AMERICA LTD | $300,000 |
| THE LIBERAL PATRIOT INC | $100,000 |
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 (FY19–20, $35k) 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 98% of Defending Democracy Together’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. Read by recipient address, 35% of the giving stays in DC; read by stated purpose it is 2% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +201% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 1 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100k 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
- WIWORKMONEY INC2× · 2020–2021 · $5.2M · revenue +397%
- CBC & B GROUP3× · 2022–2024 · $613k · revenue +201% · 100% of their budget
- MWMormon Women For Ethical Government2× · 2019–2020 · $35k · revenue +721% · 44% of their budget
Funded once
- RVREPUBLICAN VOTERS AGAINST TRUMP INCone grant, 2020 · $6.6M
- PTPizza to the Pollsone grant, 2020 · $2.3M · revenue -99%
- DDDEFENDING DEMOCRACY TOGETHER INSTITUTEgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $1.0M · revenue +776% · 35% of their budget
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 educate journalists and the public, and foster public debate, about improving political journalism to reflect public needs and hold the powerful accountable.
The organization's mission is to leverage web-technologies to improve civic engagement and voter education.
Providing research, education and practical information all aimed at optimizing newspapers' business operations, deepening their community engagement and enhancing the quality of their journalism.
Foreign Policy For America is a nonpartisan advocacy organization founded to strengthen support for principled American engagement in the world.
To teach and disseminate educational materials to the public.
Organize general election presidential and vice-presidential debates
The organization is founded for social welfare purposes, including assisting with voter registration and advocating for policies which lead to increased voter registration in the united states.
To further the common good and general welfare of the citizens of the united states of america by protecting and defending american democratic norms and institutions.
Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) uses data-driven advocacy and litigation to fight for forests, communities and the climate.
The texas tribune promotes civic engagement and public education across the state by producing and sharing for free public data interactives, statewide events and intensive and daily reporting on texas public policy, politics and current…
Advance democracy, equity, and self-determination in U.S. territories through participatory advocacy, narrative and cultural change, and ecosystem building.
The nonpartisan campaign legal center advances democracy through law at the federal, state and local levels, fighting for every american's rights to responsive government and a fair opportunity to participate in and affect the democratic…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Principles First for America Ltd and the most unlike its peers is Swamp Accountability Project. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 18 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 WORKMONEY INC ↗
- Who funds Pizza to the Polls ↗
- Who funds DEFENDING DEMOCRACY TOGETHER INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds C & B GROUP ↗
- Who funds PRINCIPLES FIRST FOR AMERICA LTD ↗
- Who funds SIXTEEN THIRTY FUND ↗
- Who funds VOTEAMERICA ↗
- Who funds KEEP COUNTRY FIRST POLICY ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds Swamp Accountability Project ↗
- Who funds THE LIBERAL PATRIOT INC ↗
- Who funds Mormon Women For Ethical Government ↗
- Who funds STAND UP REPUBLIC 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: America Votes · Sixteen Thirty 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 Defending Democracy Together 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 Defending Democracy Together?
Find your warmest path to Defending Democracy Together 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.