· Private foundation
Dorothy Lemelson 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $6k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $406k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $1.0M
- $250k+2 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE NATIONAL MUSUEM OF AMERICAN HISTORY SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION | $600,000 |
| GEORGIA RESLIENCE AND OPPORTUNITY FUND | $500,000 |
| WASHOE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $186,616 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD CASCADE WILLAMETTE | $125,000 |
| HOLLA SCHOOL | $112,000 |
| BRIDGE MEADOWS | $105,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA RENO | $100,000 |
| WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY | $100,000 |
| TEACHING FOR CHANGE | $75,000 |
| TERRY LEE WELLS NEVADA DISCOVERY MUSEUM | $62,000 |
| PEAR | $60,000 |
| CHILDREN'S INSTITUTE | $50,000 |
| THE CHILDREN'S CABINET | $50,000 |
| KNBP CHANNEL 5 | $41,000 |
| NNWLA SCHOLARSHIP FUND | $40,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $432k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 44% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
40 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 8 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, 45% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.4M 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
SMILE TRAIN INC5× · 2017–2023 · $1.2M · revenue +19%- UOUniversity of Nevada Reno Foundation7× · 2017–2024 · $960k · revenue +35%
- NANEW AVENUES FOR YOUTH INC3× · 2018–2020 · $600k · revenue +10%
Funded once
- VSVARIOUS - SEE PDF ATTACHMENTone grant, 2021 · $1.0M
- PPORTLANDone grant, 2017 · $250k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $200k
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 oregon shakespeare festival creates world-class theater, revealing our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic plays, and inspiring a love of our art form for current and future generations.
We take a joyful, community-oriented approach to raising engaged citizens, deep learners, and brave adventurers with the skills, creativity, and heart needed to better the world.
To present symphonic music of the highest quality in a distinctive way for the cultural enrichment, education, engagement and enjoyment of the people of our community.
Portland state university foundation is responsible for raising and managing private resources to advance psu's priorities and mission to be a leading urban university.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
See schedule okqed serves the people of northern california with a community-supported alternative to commercial media, providing the knowledge needed to make informed decisions; convening community dialogue; bringing the arts to everyone;…
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
Seattle academy is a dynamic community that challenges students to question, imagine, and create in order to contribute to a changing world.
Siff is a seattle-based 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit dedicated to the creation of vibrant experiences and spaces that champion film discovery and arts education.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The philadelphia school educates children for a future that is impossible to know but not impossible to shape. learn here. go anywhere.
Washington performing arts champions the arts as a unifying force. through collaborations with artists, educators, community leaders, and institutional partners, we bring wide-ranging artistic programs to stages, schools, and neighborhoods…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Women's Foundation of California and the most unlike its peers is Portland Taiko. 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 39 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
59 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. 59 of the 95 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 BRIDGE MEADOWS ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds University of Nevada Reno Foundation ↗
- Who funds NEW AVENUES FOR YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA RESILIENCE AND OPPORTUNITY FUND DBA THE GRO FUND ↗
- Who funds PEAR ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S CABINET INC ↗
- Who funds TEACHING FOR CHANGE ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC NORTHWEST COLLEGE OF ART ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds HOLLA SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Achilles International Inc ↗
- Who funds WASHOE K-12 EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Food Bank of Northern Nevada Inc ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds PEACE 4 KIDS ↗
- Who funds HOLLA ↗
- Who funds KAIROSPDX ↗
- Who funds SAFE TALK FOR TEENS ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN DONORS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds NEVADA WOMEN'S FUND ↗
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: The Oregon Community Foundation · The Collins Foundation · The Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation · James F & Marion L Miller Foundation · Meyer Memorial Trust · Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust · Juan Young Trust · Rose E Tucker Charitable Trust · The Jackson Foundation · Regional Arts & Culture Council · Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund · The Autzen 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 Dorothy Lemelson 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Artists Repertory Theatre — 48% of income from government
- Bridge Meadows — 36% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Holla — 29% of income from government
- New Avenues for Youth Inc — 20% of income from government
- Kairospdx — 19% of income from government
- Holla School — 15% of income from government
- Oregon Museum of Science and Industry — 4% of income from government
- Silk Road Project Inc — 4% of income from government
- Chamber Music Northwest — 3% of income from government
- White Bird — 2% of income from government
- Portland Opera Association Inc — 2% of income from government
- Willamette University — 1% of income from government
- Pear — 1% of income from government
- Portland Art Museum — 1% of income from government
- Friends of Chamber Music — 1% of income from government
- Portland Center Stage — 1% of income from government
- Portland Taiko — 1% of income from government
- Oregon Public Broadcasting — 1% of income from government
- Oregon Symphony Association — 0% of income from government
- Catlin Gabel School — 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 Dorothy Lemelson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Dorothy Lemelson Foundation 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.