How much does Drug Policy Action give?

Drug Policy Action reported 1 grants totaling $6,605,000 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 1 and 13 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2024.

What does Drug Policy Action fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Health (96%), Civil Rights (3%), Public Benefit (1%).

Who are Drug Policy Action's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Drug Policy Alliance ($35M), Marijuana Policy Project ($523k), Commit to Change Wa ($150k).

Does Drug Policy Action fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 80% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Which funders back the same organizations as Drug Policy Action?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Open Society Action Fund Inc, Northwest Health Foundation.

Where is Drug Policy Action based?

Drug Policy Action is based in NY.

Drug Policy Action

Drug Policy Action at a glance Mostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

Drug Policy Action

DRUG POLICY ACTION seeks to reform federal, state, and local drug policies.

$6.6M

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$6.6M

Largest

01What it funds

01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Health$39MCivil Rights$1.2MPublic Benefit$360kArts & Culture$80kCrime & Legal$75kHuman Services$51kPublic Safety & Disaster$16kEmployment$15kOther$0

02FY2025 · 1 grant

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$6,600,000

Median grant

States reached

$27M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE	$6,600,000

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY23–24, $181k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

91%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$37M · 5 repeat orgs$3.6M to everyone else

5 repeat relationships: 1 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$37M

$3.6M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

-59%

Still filing today

60%

33%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Civil RightsHuman ServicesPublic BenefitHealthPublic Safety & DisasterOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

DP
DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE
7× · 2019–2025 · $35M · revenue -54% · 67% of their budget
IP
INITIATIVE PETITION COMMITTEE NO 44
2× · 2020–2021 · $2.1M
MP
MARIJUANA POLICY PROJECT
2× · 2017–2023 · $523k · revenue -78%

Funded once

MT
MORE TREATMENT FOR A BETTER OREGON YES TO 110
one grant, 2021 · $2.4M
CT
COMMIT TO CHANGE WA
one grant, 2022 · $150k
UO
UNITE OREGON ACTION
one grant, 2024 · $145k · revenue -91%

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Greater Spokane Action

Greater Spokane Action (GSA) is the political arm of Greater Spokane Progress (GSP), reshaping politics by educating, advocating and mobilizing to establish and strengthen equitable and progressive policies in our community.

Civil Rights

Latino Political Network

—

California Latinas for Reproductive Justice

California latinas for reproductive justice (clrj) is a statewide organization committed to honoring the experiences of latinas to uphold our dignity, our bodies, sexuality, and families. we build latinas' power and cultivate leadership…

Health

Center for Intercultural Organizing

Center for intercultural organizing dba unite oregon is a diverse, grassroots organization working to build a multicultural movement for immigrant and refugee rights through education, civic engagement, community organizing and…

Civil Rights

4A American Alliance of Artists and Audiences Inc

Arts & Culture

Raise the Wage Nebraska

Advocacy of policies to support Nebraskans.

—

Asian American Advocacy Alliance

Community Improvement

Grassroots Leadership Inc

Transforming the narrative of criminalization: an abolitionist approach. ending the reliance on the private prison industry decarceration: advocating for policies that reduce the prison population, such as bail reform and funding…

—

Upstate Action Alliance

Non-PartisanVoter Educ Advocacy

Civil Rights

Latino Network Action Fund

Latino network action fund seeks to create a more representative democracy in oregon.

Community Improvement

League of Minority Voters

Promote the advancement of minority civic rights through education and empowerment and bringing a voice to the issues that uniquely impact communities of color.

Civil Rights

Newr Denver

Advocate for housing rights and a ballot initiative in Denver, Colorado.

—

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Latino Network; the most unlike its peers is New Approach Montana. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

15 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 15 of the 35 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

13/15

Grantees still filing

3/15

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Health$34,725,884Other$5,336,149Civil Rights$608,000Human Services$181,000Public Benefit$170,000Public Safety & Disaster$35,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Open Society Action Fund IncNY15.5× affinity5 shared granteesties to 1 of 1Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Open Society Action Fund Inc · Northwest Health Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Drug Policy Action funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Drug Policy Action. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

3get no government money at all

1report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–50%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Drug Policy Action?

Find your warmest path to Drug Policy Action 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.

Play a game based on Drug Policy Action’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home