· Private foundation
Donna and Jim Stephenson Foundation
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 FY2022–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $60k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $200k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SHEPHERD CENTER FOUNDATION | $1,027,804 |
| AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| THE POLICY CIRCLE | $50,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION (FIRE) | $25,000 |
| FREEDOM FIGHTERS FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| CHRIST CHURCH EPISCOPAL | $5,000 |
| THE CATHEDRAL OF ST PHILIP | $5,000 |
| SAMARITAN'S PURSE INTERNATIONAL RELIEF | $3,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY22–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 87% of your 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 31% of Donna and Jim Stephenson 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 +34% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 4 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; $38k 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
- SCSHEPHERD CENTER FOUNDATION INC2× · 2023–2024 · $2.0M · revenue ×121
- AFAmericans for Prosperity Foundation2× · 2023–2024 · $300k · revenue +56%
- TPTHE POLICY CIRCLE CO3× · 2022–2024 · $201k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- SCSHEPHERD CENTER INCone grant, 2022 · $1.0M · revenue +18%
- TSTHE SEMINAR NETWORK INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue +170%
- TITHE INDEPENDENT INSTITUTEgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $99k · revenue +60%
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.
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
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.
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…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
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…
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…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
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…
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland, school of medicine, administrative support services are provided to the physician practices of the university of maryland, including but not limited to information technology,…
Non-profit research institute to advance a systems (or holistic and cross-disciplinary) approach to science; personalized medicine; global health & environmental sustainability; science education; & the pioneering & invention of biological…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 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. 11 of the 16 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 SHEPHERD CENTER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SHEPHERD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Americans for Prosperity Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE POLICY CIRCLE CO ↗
- Who funds THE SEMINAR NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds THE INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC ↗
- Who funds JOB CREATORS NETWORK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY STUDIES ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds Historic Oakland Foundation 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: Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 Donna and Jim Stephenson 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.
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.