· Public charity
Donors Trust Inc
Support charities & sponsor programs which alleviate, through education, research & private initiatives, society's most pervasive and radical needs, including those relating to social welfare, health, environment, economics, foreign relations, arts and culture.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k115 grants · $815k
- $10k–50k333 grants · $6.4M
- $50k–250k282 grants · $30M
- $250k+189 grants · $245M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MedStar Georgetown University Hospital | $35,000,000 |
| America First Legal Foundation | $20,734,450 |
| State Policy Network | $7,000,128 |
| Institute for Justice | $6,999,880 |
| Consumers' Research Inc | $5,053,100 |
| Texas A&M Foundation | $5,000,000 |
| Reason Foundation | $4,987,225 |
| Teneo Network Inc | $4,433,000 |
| Real Clear Foundation | $4,150,000 |
| GMU Foundation | $3,750,000 |
| Lucy Burns Institute | $3,129,038 |
| Foundation for Constitutional Freedom | $2,975,000 |
| Mackinac Center for Public Policy | $2,885,200 |
| Informing America Foundation | $2,800,000 |
| ACANI Inc | $2,770,000 |
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, $11.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 64% 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 12% of Donors Trust 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 +33% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
676 repeat relationships — 478 still active in FY2024, 198 since wound down; 213 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $21M 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
- T8THE 85 FUND4× · 2020–2024 · $68M · revenue +156% · 74% of their budget
- SPSTATE POLICY NETWORK5× · 2020–2024 · $46M · revenue +71% · 56% of their budget
- TMTHE MEDSTAR-GEORGETOWN MEDICAL CENTER INC3× · 2022–2024 · $38M · revenue +36%
Funded once
- LOLEGION OF CHRIST INCone grant, 2023 · $25M
- THTHE HAROLD GRINSPOON FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $5.0M · revenue +122%
- PSPROPTER STRATEGIES INCone grant, 2020 · $5.0M · 89% 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.
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
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.
The peterson institute for international economics (piie) is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening prosperity and human welfare in the global economy through expert analysis and practical…
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,…
To educate the public on constitutional issues and public policy matters. We are dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, peace through strength, limited government, free enterprise, and the values embodied in the Declaration of…
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.
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. Pew Research Center generates a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue and…
The center for strategic and international studies (csis) is a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to advancing practical ideas to address the world's greatest challenges.
The institute works as a public education organization that focuses on a wide spectrum of rapidly evolving foreign policy and international issues.
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…
A national non partisan public policy forum to illuminate issues of public policy.
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Accountability Foundation and the most unlike its peers is House of Yoga. 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 25 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) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
1096 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. 1096 of the 1,268 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 DECHOMAI ASSET TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE 85 FUND ↗
- Who funds STATE POLICY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds THE MEDSTAR-GEORGETOWN MEDICAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CONSUMERS' RESEARCH INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds America First Legal Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds REAL CLEAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds LUCY BURNS INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEFENSE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Texas A&M Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY FOR LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY STUDIES ↗
- Who funds ACANI INC ↗
- Who funds COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds THE GREEN LIGHT PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds BRADLEY IMPACT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Teneo Network Inc ↗
- Who funds CERTELL INC ↗
- Who funds THE REASON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY INC ↗
- Who funds MACKINAC CENTER ↗
- Who funds MIDDLE EAST FORUM ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds OREGON INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND MEDICINE ↗
- Who funds ONE GENERATION AWAY ↗
- Who funds Americans for Public Trust ↗
- Who funds CERGE-EI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PASSAGES AMERICA ISRAEL INC ↗
- Who funds INFORMING AMERICA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN REDISTRICTING PROJECT ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AMERICANS FOR LIBERTY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty ↗
- Who funds Pacific Legal Foundation ↗
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: Bradley Impact Fund Inc · The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Inc · Sarah Scaife Foundation Incorporated · State Policy Network · The Searle Freedom Trust · Adolph Coors Foundation · Atlas Economic Research Foundation · Diana Davis Spencer Foundation Inc · The Dunn Foundation · The Roe Foundation · Charles Koch Institute · Thomas W Smith Foundation 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 Donors Trust 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Yale University — 12% of income from government
- Institute for Advanced Study - Louis Bamberger & Mrs Felix Fuld Foundation — 7% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Aging With Dignity 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Donors Trust Inc?
Find your warmest path to Donors Trust Inc 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.