· Public charity
Esa's Foundation
The esa foundation harnesses the power of the video game industry to benefit students, schools, and charities, with the ultimate goal of improving the lives of america's youth and setting them on career paths.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GAY GAMING PROFESSIONALS | $10,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 84% of your 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 10% of Esa's Foundation’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. Read by recipient address, 14% of the giving stays in DC; read by stated purpose it is 10% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +62% since the first grant, against +45% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- CMCHILDREN'S MIRACLE NETWORK3× · 2017–2019 · $155k · revenue +31%
- GPGG PROFESSIONALS INC2× · 2023–2024 · $114k · revenue +76% · 27% of their budget
- IIICIVICS INC2× · 2017–2018 · $100k · revenue +321%
Funded once
- BGBLACK GIRLS CODE INCone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue -74%
- ISINTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP AND TUITION SERVICES INCone grant, 2017 · $89k
- AAAFTER-SCHOOL ALL-STARSgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $40k · revenue +55%
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.
Digital Girl, Inc. (DGI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering the underserved youth of New York City, especially young girls, to pursue studies and careers in STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) disciplines.
Girls global academy public charter school (gga) was incorporated in the district of columbia in june 2019 and opened its doors in august 2020 fostering pathways to lead and learn. as an all-girls public charter high school, gga ignites…
The international coalition of girls' schools (icgs) is the leading advocate for girls' schools, connecting and collaborating globally with individuals, schools, and mission-aligned entities dedicated to educating and empowering girls.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
In fiscal year 2025, the agency operated an americorps maker fellowship, placing 7 americorps vista members at 6 different education focused organizations in ca, ma, and ny. americorps members worked on capacity building projects to expand…
Gci brings together young global citizens from all sectors of society and empowers them as lifelong ethical leaders of positive change.
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Activate empowers scientists to reinvent the world by bringing their research to market. activate partners with u.s. based funders, research institutions, and other pillars of the hard technology community to help entrepreneurial…
The organizations mission is to inspire all girls to be strong,smart, and bold, through research-based, innovative, and educational programs and activities.
Girl effect works for a future in which every girl is in control of her body, her health, her learning and her livelihood. we work across africa and asia with adolescent girls and young women using the power of media and technology to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Black Girls Code Inc and the most unlike its peers is Warfighter Engaged Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
19 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. 19 of the 21 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 BLACK GIRLS CODE INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S MIRACLE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds GG PROFESSIONALS INC ↗
- Who funds ICIVICS INC ↗
- Who funds BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds AFTER-SCHOOL ALL-STARS ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds VISION QUEST 2020 ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR YOUNG ARTISTS AND WRITERS INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLSTART ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL GAME JAM INC ↗
- Who funds BECKER COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds WOMEN IN GAMES INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds WARFIGHTER ENGAGED INC ↗
- Who funds TRACYS KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT TOMORROW ↗
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: Silicon Valley Community Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Esa's 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Icivics Inc — 13% 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 Esa's Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Esa's 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.