· Private foundation
Democracy Fund Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k15 grants · $317k
- $50k–250k167 grants · $24M
- $250k+55 grants · $25M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| New Venture Fund | $1,500,000 |
| Solutions Project Inc | $1,500,000 |
| Borealis Philanthropy | $1,020,000 |
| JustFundUs | $934,000 |
| Hopewell Fund | $750,000 |
| The Project on Government Oversight Inc | $750,000 |
| New Venture Fund | $720,000 |
| Free Press | $700,000 |
| Democracy Forward Foundation | $700,000 |
| Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law | $600,000 |
| People's Action Institute | $560,000 |
| Proteus Fund Inc | $550,000 |
| Partnership for Public Service Inc | $525,000 |
| State Leadership Project | $500,000 |
| Global Impact | $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 (FY18–24, $8.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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 8% of Democracy Fund Inc’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 +49% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
275 repeat relationships — 142 still active in FY2024, 133 since wound down; 33 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.2M 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
NEO Philanthropy Inc7× · 2017–2024 · $8.0M · revenue +191%- POPROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT INC8× · 2017–2024 · $6.8M · revenue +17%
- BPBOREALIS PHILANTHROPY6× · 2019–2024 · $4.8M · revenue +62%
Funded once
- TCThe Center for Investigative Reportone grant, 2017 · $1.8M
- TLTHE LENFEST INSTITUTE FOR JOURNALISM SPECIAL ASSET FUND OF TPFone grant, 2019 · $600k · revenue +4%
- SPSTATE POWER FUNDgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $400k · revenue +220%
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 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.
Providing research, education and practical information all aimed at optimizing newspapers' business operations, deepening their community engagement and enhancing the quality of their journalism.
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,…
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
Nbr conducts advanced independent research on strategic, political, economic, energy, globalization, and health issues affecting u.s. relations with asia. drawing upon an extensive network of the world's leading specialists and leveraging…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
The news media alliance (nma) is a nonprofit organization representing nearly 2,000 news media organizations and their multi-media platform businesses in the us, canada and europe.
The center for popular democracy (cpd) and its affiliates know that everyday people have the power to change the world. we upend business and politics as usual to forge a representative, multiracial government and society where we all…
To teach and disseminate educational materials to the public.
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.
The center for international policy is a woman-led, progressive, independent nonprofit center for research, education, and advocacy working to advance a more peaceful, just, and sustainable u.s. approach to foreign policy. through…
The national foundation for american policy is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to public policy research on trade, immigration, and other issues of national importance. the organization seeks to expand the debate over the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Center for Family Philanthropy Inc and the most unlike its peers is Field Foundation of Illinois. 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 26 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1.0% 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.
398 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. 398 of the 463 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 NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds THE MIAMI FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JOURNALISM PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds HOPEWELL FUND ↗
- Who funds BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PROTECT DEMOCRACY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY ↗
- Who funds FREE PRESS ↗
- Who funds PROTEUS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds PARTNERSHIP FOR PUBLIC SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds PRO PUBLICA INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DEMOCRACY WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT NEWS ↗
- Who funds COMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Center for Investigative Reporting Inc ↗
- Who funds SANTA FE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds ISSUE ONE ↗
- Who funds THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds THE GERMAN MARSHALL FUND OF THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds THE CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds R STREET INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PRESS INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds MONTCLAIR STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM J BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND CIVIC LIFE ↗
- Who funds Asian Law Caucus ↗
- Who funds THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS ↗
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: Foundation to Promote Open Society · The Ford Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · New Venture Fund · John S and James L Knight Foundation · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · Carnegie Corporation of New York · Proteus Fund 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 Democracy Fund 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- The Morgan State University Foundation Inc — 7% of income from government
- The Poynter Institute for Media Studies Inc — 1% of income from government
- Hope Community Center Inc — 0% 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.