· Public charity
First Look Institute Inc
First Look Institute supports fearless investigative journalism, innovative and cinematic nonfiction filmmaking, and press freedom initiatives to protect the right to a free and open society and press.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NewCoNews Inc | $14,770,250 |
| Field of Vision Inc | $9,372,941 |
| University of Maryland College Park Foundation | $997,000 |
| The Association of the Bar of the City Of NY Fund (dba The Vance Center) | $957,000 |
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 (FY17–18, $680k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +98% since the first grant, against +45% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2023, 11 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 4% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25M 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
- AOASSOCIATION OF THE BAR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK FUND INC4× · 2019–2023 · $1.1M · revenue +1%
- FAFIRST AMENDMENT COALITION3× · 2017–2019 · $120k · revenue +164%
- TSTHE SIGNALS NETWORK INC2× · 2019–2020 · $105k · revenue +628% · 52% of their budget
Funded once
- BDBaker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PCone grant, 2018 · $1.2M
- BDBaker Donelsonone grant, 2017 · $204k
- HRHUMAN RIGHTS FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $110k · revenue +73%
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 foundation's mission is to produce, support and promote high-quality journalism focused on underserved issue and focus areas in order to educate and inform the public and ensure widespread, ongoing public access to educational,…
Providing research, education and practical information all aimed at optimizing newspapers' business operations, deepening their community engagement and enhancing the quality of their journalism.
The organization provides critical support to independent journalists to investigate news stories regarding corruption, malfeasance, exploitation, misappropriation of funds in the public and private sectors.
International consortium of investigative journalists, inc.'s (icij) mission is to show people how the world really works through stories that rock the world; forcing positive change.
CITY REPORT, INC. serves the people of New York through independent journalism that answers their information needs and holds the powerful to account.
The american journalism project, inc. is a first-of-its-kind venture philanthropy dedicated to building and supporting local news across the country. american journalism project makes grants to nonprofit news organizations, partners with…
Allbritton journalism institute aims to train a new generation of non-partisan political reporters from diverse backgrounds to produce high-quality, fact-based journalism.
The assocn. of foreign press corrs. usa serves the community of international correspondents in the u.s. through educational programs, educational publications, and the production of educational content, as well as scholarships, excellence…
The marshall project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering criminal justice.
Ehrp supports independent journalists to create high quality stories about economic inequity. we then place those stories in mainstream media, mobilizing readers to fight systems perpetuating economic injustice.
First Look Institute supports fearless investigative journalism, innovative and cinematic nonfiction filmmaking, and press freedom initiatives to protect the right to a free and open society and press.
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Human Rights Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Committee to Protect Journalists Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 30 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 11% of your grantees by number, and just 84% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 48 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 THE INTERCEPT MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds FIELD OF VISION INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION OF THE BAR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK FUND INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM OF THE PRESS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TYPE MEDIA CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PRESS PHOTOGRAPHERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST AMENDMENT COALITION ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE SIGNALS NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds FIRELIGHT MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds JOURNALISM DEVELOPMENT NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INC ↗
- Who funds COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS INC ↗
- Who funds THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS ↗
- Who funds Alliance for Global Justice Corp ↗
- Who funds Sisters in Cinema NFP ↗
- Who funds SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FJC ↗
- Who funds MAYSLES INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds BIG SKY FILM INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds The Center for Investigative Reporting formrly Foundation for National Progress ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PRESS PHOTOGRAPHERS ASSOCIATION 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: Foundation to Promote Open Society · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · The Ford Foundation · Chicken & Egg Films Inc · Perspective Media Initiatives Inc · Park Foundation Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Tides Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Network for Good · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation 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 First Look Institute Inc 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.
- The Center for Independent Documentary Inc — 6% 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.