· Public charity
For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST)
See Mission statement on Schedule O, pg.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 50% of For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST)’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 482 grants below total $13,021,284 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $33,011,192 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $19,989,908 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 $10k350 grants · $1.5M
- $10k–50k98 grants · $1.9M
- $50k–250k23 grants · $2.3M
- $250k+11 grants · $7.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FIRST in Michigan | $1,397,747 |
| IngenuityNE Inc | $1,063,191 |
| FIRST in Texas | $964,694 |
| FIRST Chesapeake | $902,500 |
| FIRST North Carolina | $547,400 |
| Georgia FIRST Robotics Inc | $517,600 |
| Mid Atlantic Robotics | $517,517 |
| Washington First Robotics | $503,336 |
| Oregon Robotics Tournament & Outreach Program | $318,639 |
| Indiana FIRST Inc | $293,731 |
| Wisconsin FIRST Robotics Inc | $250,000 |
| Colorado Robotics Excelling at Science and Technology Inc | $228,777 |
| American Indian Science and Engineering Society | $205,086 |
| Fikret Yuksel Foundation | $161,000 |
| Pennsylvania FIRST Robotics | $153,721 |
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, $2.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 74% 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 +31% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
1064 repeat relationships — 353 still active in FY2025, 711 since wound down; 112 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.1M 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
- FIFIRST IN MICHIGAN6× · 2017–2025 · $4.3M · revenue +72% · 42% of their budget
- IIINGENUITYNE INC6× · 2017–2025 · $3.4M · revenue +124% · 66% of their budget
- FFFoundation for Inspiration & Recognition of Scienc5× · 2017–2025 · $2.8M · revenue +58% · 32% of their budget
Funded once
- OSOREGON STATE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2017 · $113k
- MSMANCHESTER SCHOOL DISTRICT2× · 2017–2022 · $106k
- NANc A&T State Universityone grant, 2024 · $85k
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.
High school students learning to make robots
To increase student interest and involvement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) by engaging students in hands-on programs and competitions in robotics, programming, engineering, math, and other stem-related areas.
STEM Education Grades K - 12
We mentor young people (Grades K through 12) as they learn to design, build and program robots, which are then taken to regional and national competitions. This practical, collaborative, hands-on experience in science and technology has…
Our mission is to challenge and nurture young women to thrive in future global markets through personalized STEM advanced academics. Through a supportive small school and single-gender environment, project-based learning, and STEM advanced…
High school robotics club
Our primary program is the Titanium Tigers Robotics Team, which is a student run FIRST robotics team composed of students who work together to build robots for FIRST robotics competitions and based at Chapel Hill High School. Our goal is…
youth educational and enrichment programs for girls
Worked with high schools and middle schools teaching how to design and build battle bots
To inspire students to use their talents to be problem solvers while fostering teamwork. Mentors facilitate team development by focusing on quality, safety and gracious professionalism. The field of robotics is the arena in which the teams…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Access Educational Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Radha Govind Dham Dallas. 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 19 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) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 10% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
561 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. 561 of the 2,000 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 FIRST IN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds INGENUITYNE INC ↗
- Who funds Foundation for Inspiration & Recognition of Scienc ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIAFIRST ↗
- Who funds FIRST NORTH CAROLINA ↗
- Who funds Mid-Atlantic Robotics A NJ Non-Profit Corporation ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON FIRST ROBOTICS ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA FIRST ROBOTICS INC ↗
- Who funds NYC FIRST Inc ↗
- Who funds INSCITE ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN FIRST ROBOTICS INC ↗
- Who funds PLAYING AT LEARNING ↗
- Who funds OREGON ROBOTICS TOURNAMENT & OUTREACH PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds INTENTIONAL INNOVATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INDIAN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds INDIANAFIRST INC FIRST INDIANA ROBOTICS ↗
- Who funds COLORADO ROBOTICS EXCELLING AT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds BREVARD SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA FIRST ROBOTICS ↗
- Who funds THE OHIO EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH FOUND ↗
- Who funds THE D39C COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN NEW MEXICO STEM ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds FIRST California Robotics ↗
- Who funds HIGH TECH KIDS ↗
- Who funds NYC STEAM EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA ROBOTICS ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds FIKRET YUKSEL 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: Foundation for Inspiration & Recognition of Scienc · Round It Up America Inc · GenYOUTH Incorporated · Project Lead the Way Inc · Project Lead the Way Inc · The George W Bush Foundation · Minnesota State High School League Foundation · Washington First Robotics · Ingenuityne Inc · The Mr Holland's Opus Foundation · Sme Education Foundation · Save the Music 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 For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) 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.
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.