· Public charity
Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated
To preserve the natural systems on which all life depends.
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.
The 151 grants below total $7,853,797 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $51,557,871 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $43,704,074 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k96 grants · $2.1M
- $50k–250k46 grants · $4.5M
- $250k+2 grants · $1.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CORNELL UNIVERSITY | $931,793 |
| PARTNERSHIP PROJECT INC | $300,000 |
| EMERGING MARKETS INVESTORS ALLIANCE INC | $220,000 |
| CERES INC | $205,000 |
| PLANET REIMAGINED INC | $200,000 |
| ROCKY MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE | $192,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND | $192,223 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $168,839 |
| NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC | $158,971 |
| PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE | $152,543 |
| PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY (THE) | $145,675 |
| WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CORPORATION | $142,145 |
| THE RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK | $137,721 |
| AFRICAN AMERICAN MAYORS ASSOC | $132,500 |
| DEEP SOUTH CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE | $125,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $6.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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
Grants abroad, by region — $9.7M on the FY2025 return
Schedule F, as filed: 7 regions. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: Forests · Clean Air Science · Fisheries & Oceans
Stated purpose: Corporate Engagement · methane · Justice and Equity
Stated purpose: METHANE · Fisheries & Oceans · Region India
Stated purpose: Oil & Gas Pollution · methane · COMMUNICATIONS
Stated purpose: FORESTS · METHANE
Stated purpose: methane · CORPORATE ENGAGEMENT · Fisheries
Stated purpose: RECREATIONAL FISHING · FORESTS · CLEAN ENERGY
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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 +47% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
300 repeat relationships — 103 still active in FY2025, 197 since wound down; 43 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.2M 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
The Partnership Project Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $4.2M · revenue +35%
Cornell University6× · 2017–2025 · $2.8M · revenue +59%- OIOPENET INC2× · 2022–2023 · $1.8M · revenue +204% · 40% of their budget
Funded once
- CMCarbon Mapper Incone grant, 2021 · $804k · revenue -49%
- HHHOUSTON HEALTH FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $570k · revenue -62%
- CAClimate Advisers Incone grant, 2017 · $528k
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.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
The NW Energy Coalition is an alliance of over 100 environmental, civic, and human service organizations, utilities, and businesses in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia, plus many individual members. The NW Energy…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Nacwa is the national voice of public clean water utilities, shaping water policy, convening a vibrant peer network, and empowering water leaders.
E3g is a leading international not-for-profit think tank specialising in climate diplomacy harnessing expertise in the politics and economics of climate change.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
Climate group advances climate action by mobilizing business and government leadership to drive systemic decarbonization across energy, transport, and industry, while engaging the public through large-scale convenings and global platforms.…
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
To research and develop healthy climate solutions comprising global food security, ecosystem regeneration and carbon balance in seas and soils.
Our mission is to fight against fossil fuel executives and industries that have turned our communities into dumping grounds for toxic waste, poisoning our air, water, lan, and bodies. We organize to oppose giant oil refineries, dirty…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Environment America Research and Policy Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Concerned Citizens of St John. 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 26 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 7% 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.
501 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. 501 of the 619 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 ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE ACTION FUND ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds EMERGENT FOREST FINANCE ACCELERATOR INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Partnership Project Inc ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds OPENET INC ↗
- Who funds CERES INC ↗
- Who funds Resources for the Future Inc ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE ADVISERS TRUST ↗
- Who funds Clean Air Council ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds CITIZENS UTILITY BOARD ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds African American Mayors Assocation ↗
- Who funds Woodwell Climate Research Center Inc ↗
- Who funds THE SAN FRANCISCO CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Carbon Mapper Inc ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds BONNEVILLE ENVIRONMENTAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENT TEXAS RESEARCH AND POLICY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN SECURITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Community College Partners Program ↗
- Who funds GROUND WATER RESEARCH & EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Natural Resources Council of Maine 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: United States Energy Foundation · The Energy Foundation · Resources Legacy Fund · The Partnership Project Inc · Natural Resources Defense Council Inc · Windward Fund · Western Conservation Foundation · Climateworks Foundation · Rockefeller Family Fund Inc · Environmental Defense Action Fund · The Wilderness Society · Solutions Project 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 Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated 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.
- Bonneville Environmental Foundation — 100% of income from government
- Defensores De La Cuenca — 100% of income from government
- Greater Baybrook Alliance Inc — 60% of income from government
- Save the Sound — 37% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- National Center for Healthy Housing Inc — 24% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Yale University — 12% of income from government
- Woodwell Climate Research Center Inc — 11% of income from government
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute — 8% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Clinton Hill Community Action Inc — 6% of income from government
- Ceres 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.