· Private foundation
Five Below Foundation
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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $33k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $305k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $435k
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| READING PARTNERS | $300,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF AMERICA | $150,000 |
| MAKE A WISH FOUNDATION OF AMERICA | $100,000 |
| EAGLES AUTISM CHALLENGE | $75,000 |
| GIRLS ON THE RUN | $60,000 |
| THE MALCOLM JENKINS FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| ELUNA | $25,000 |
| THE FUND FOR THE SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PHILADELPHIA | $25,000 |
| UNLOCKE THE LIGHT FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE CHILDRENS HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA YOUTH BASKETBALL | $25,000 |
| CRADLES TO CRAYONS | $25,000 |
| PHILABUNDANCE | $25,000 |
| CH PENNSYLVANIA UNDER 21 | $25,000 |
| THE FISHING SCHOOL | $20,000 |
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 (FY22–25, $100k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 50% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
22 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 15 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, 65% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $374k 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
- RPREADING PARTNERS4× · 2021–2025 · $670k · revenue +1%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA3× · 2023–2025 · $205k · revenue +35%
- TCTHE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION3× · 2021–2025 · $125k · revenue +49%
Funded once
TREVOR PROJECT INCone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +2%- BRBABE RUTH LEAGUE INCone grant, 2024 · $25k · revenue 0%
- CHCOVENANT HOUSE PENNSYLVANIA UNDER 21one grant, 2024 · $25k
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 children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
Summary
Visit philadelphia is our name and our mission. as the region's official tourism marketing agency, we build greater philadelphia's image, drive visitation and boost the economy.
Rockefeller philanthropy advisors aims to accelerate philanthropy in pursuit of a just world
The mission of children's cancer cause is to champion policies and programs that improve the lives of children with cancer and survivors.
The philadelphia school educates children for a future that is impossible to know but not impossible to shape. learn here. go anywhere.
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
The elizabeth glaser pediatric aids foundation (egpaf) is a proven leader in the fight against pediatric hiv/aids and has reached over 33 million pregnant women with services to prevent transmission of hiv to their babies. to date, egpaf…
Foundations is dedicated to improving the quality of education for our nation's most vulnerable children by strengthening the skills of educators through professional learning. foundations, inc. is a not-for-profit educational service…
United way's mission is to end intergenerational poverty in our region by harnessing, leveraging and strategically investing the collective power of donors, advocates and volunteers, to help individuals and families break the cycle of…
Pidc plans and implements economic development initiatives (see schedule o) which enhance the competitive environment, generate jobs and produce higher tax ratables throughout philadelphia.
The mission of philadelphia youth sports collaborative (pysc) is to dramatically enhance the capacity of youth-serving organizations in philadelphia to provide high quality, sports-based youth development programs to children in every…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of America and the most unlike its peers is American Humane Association. 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 28 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) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
41 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 41 of the 52 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 READING PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds EAGLES AUTISM CHALLENGE INC ↗
- Who funds Please Touch Museum ↗
- Who funds CENTER CITY DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Philabundance ↗
- Who funds ELUNA FORMERLY THE MOYER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MALCOLM JENKINS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TREVOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds The Marty Lyons Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA PARKS ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA YOUTH BASKETBALL INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds The Fishing School Inc ↗
- Who funds SUNRISE DAY CAMPS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE FUND FOR THE SCHOOL DISTRICT OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds BABE RUTH LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds CRADLES TO CRAYONS INC ↗
- Who funds CH PENNSYLVANIA UNDER - 21 ↗
- Who funds Jewish Community Centers of Chicago ↗
- Who funds TRANSPLANT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Operation Warm Inc ↗
- Who funds THE NEMOURS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN HUMANE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE BREATHING ROOM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NRF FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOUNCE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION ↗
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 Philadelphia Foundation · United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey · Connelly Foundation · Independence Blue Cross Foundation · The Tuttleman Foundation · Future Standard Foundation · Philadelphia City Fund Inc · Henry Dolfinger 2 Trust Uw · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The William Penn Foundation · Nfl Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund
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 Five Below 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Cradles to Crayons Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Nemours Foundation — 0% of income from government
- Babe Ruth League 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Five Below Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Five Below 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.