· Private foundation
Elster Foundation Agt
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k50 grants · $131k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $183k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SARASOTA BALLET OF FLORIDA INC | $60,000 |
| ROBERT W WOODRUFF ARTS CENTER INC | $27,500 |
| MARTINSVILLE-HENRY COUNTY YMCA | $25,000 |
| FLORIDA STUDIO THEATRE INC | $25,000 |
| The Atlanta Opera Inc | $25,000 |
| CHILDRENS HEALTHCARE OF ATLANTA FDN | $25,000 |
| ATLANTA BALLET | $15,000 |
| SPCA OF MARTINSVILLE AND HENRY CNTY | $10,000 |
| ROCHESTER AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| PIEDMONT ARTS ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| TERMINUS MODERN BALLET THEATRE | $10,000 |
| CHATHAM HALL | $5,000 |
| SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOC | $5,000 |
| MARITIME MUSEUM ASSOCIATION OF | $5,000 |
| VIRGINIA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY | $5,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $18k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 94% 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.
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 +36% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
72 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2025, 30 since wound down; 17 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $80k 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
- SBSarasota Ballet of Florida Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $598k · revenue +131%
FLORIDA STUDIO THEATRE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $185k · revenue +101%- CHCHILDREN'S HEALTHCARE OF ATLANTA INC5× · 2020–2024 · $110k · revenue +33%
Funded once
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +30%- GCGULF COAST COMM FNDNone grant, 2017 · $10k
- NCN CAROLINA DISASTER RELIEF FUNDone grant, 2018 · $7k
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.
Education and Public Service Mission: Rollins College educates students for global citizenship and responsible leadership, empowering graduates to pursue meaningful lives and productive careers. We are committed to liberal arts ethos and…
See Disclosure Above.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
To be north carolina's state orchestra, an orchestra achieving the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards, and embracing its dual legacies of statewide service and music education.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Founded in 1902, barton college is a four-year, private, liberal arts college located in wilson, n.c. the barton experience focuses on academic excellence within a wide range of professional and liberal arts programs leading to…
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…
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
Spelman college, a historically black college and global leader in the education of women of african descent, is dedicated to the academic excellence of its students.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Atlanta Ballet Inc and the most unlike its peers is Wake Forest University. 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 47 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
68 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. 68 of the 120 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 Sarasota Ballet of Florida Inc ↗
- Who funds ATLANTA BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA STUDIO THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HEALTHCARE OF ATLANTA INC ↗
- Who funds The Piedmont Arts Association ↗
- Who funds ROBERT W WOODRUFF ARTS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds RON CLARK ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds Charlotte Preparatory School Inc ↗
- Who funds CARLISLE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE PARK SCHOOL OF BUFFALO ↗
- Who funds BERRY COLLEGE INC ↗
- Who funds WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds USS MIDWAY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SPRECKELS ORGAN SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE ATLANTA OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds CHATHAM HALL ↗
- Who funds Elon University ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO HUMANE SOCIETY AND SPCA ↗
- Who funds City Springs Theatre ↗
- Who funds COLON CANCER COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds ASOLO THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds GRAYSON-JOCKEY CLUB RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ROCHESTER AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SARASOTA MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR THE HORSE FKA THE AAEP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AUBURN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Maritime Museum Association of San Diego ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF THE BLUE RIDGE 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: The Bessemer Giving Fund · Community Foundation Serving Western Virginia · Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta Inc · Ibm International Foundation · The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta Inc · The Coca-Cola Foundation Inc · The Arthur M Blank Family Foundation · Foundation for the Carolinas · Georgia Power Foundation Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Winston-Salem Foundation · Betty and Leon Goldstein 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 Elster Foundation Agt 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.
- Pines of Sarasota Inc — 18% of income from government
- Florida Studio Theatre 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.