· Private foundation
Fossil 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k4 grants · $75k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $275k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| QUEST ALLIANCE | $75,000 |
| AFRICAN VISIONARY FUND | $50,000 |
| MEDHA LEARNING FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| MEDHA FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| AFRICAN VISIONARY FUND | $50,000 |
| ARRAY EDUCATION | $30,000 |
| GREENCHECK INC | $25,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF TX | $10,000 |
| TEAM RUBICON | $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.
Your US giving — 66% of grant dollars ($4.2M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 34% that went abroad ($2.1M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY20–24, $470k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 68% 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
Beyond the US — 34% of all-years giving ($2.1M)
8 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 15% of Fossil 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, 12% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 26% — more 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.
26 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 3 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, 54% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $160k 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
- TBTHE BIG PICTURE COMPANY3× · 2021–2023 · $400k · revenue +66%
- BTBIG THOUGHT5× · 2020–2024 · $310k · revenue +35%
- GIGLASSWING INTERNATIONAL USA INC2× · 2023–2024 · $250k · revenue +205%
Funded once
- KBKING BAUDOUIN FOUNDATION UNITED STA (AFRICAN VISIONARY FUND)one grant, 2022 · $300k
- KBKing Baudouin Foundation United Staone grant, 2023 · $300k
- SHSHINING HOPE FOR COMMUNITIES INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $200k · revenue +89%
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.
With love and respect, we partner with opportunity youth to build the skillsets and mindsets that lead to lifelong learning, livelihood, and leadership. youthbuild strives to create a world where all young people are seen for their…
Our mission is to create a fair and inclusive economy where underserved people have quality financial choices and opportunities to improve their economic well-being. we find and help build innovative companies with the potential to reach…
See Schedule ODeans for Impact supports educator-preparation programs to bring the science of learning into teaching practice; partners with policymakers to ensure pathways into teaching are accessible, practice-based, and…
Common impact's mission is to strengthen the capacity of social change organizations, enabling them to better run and scale their programs. through its partnership with companies, common impact taps into the business skills and expertise…
Children growing up in historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities lack access to a broad spectrum of resources and opportunities, and attend schools that are not equipped to meet their needs. To address this, TFA's mission…
Devworks international is dedicated to a society where all people enjoy the freedom to pursue their own sustainable development. we contribute to this by strengthening the capacity of local organizations.
Building a movement of diverse, upwardly mobile college grads overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections.
Middle east investment initiative, inc. (meii) stimulates sustainable economic activity and long-lasting job creation in the middle east and north africa (mena) by designing and deploying finance and technical assistance programs to…
The mission of the silicon schools fund is to improve education through supporting the launch of excellent new schools, improving academic instruction in existing schools, and by funding some of the boldest innovations in education…
Upturn advances equity and justice in the design, governance, and use of technology.
Techbridge breaks the cycle of generational poverty through the innovative use of technology to transform nonprofit and community impact. techbridge's work is focused on four pillars: hunger relief, homeless support, social justice and…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Griptape Org Inc and the most unlike its peers is Medha Corp. 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 18 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) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 7% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 74 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 BIG PICTURE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds BIG THOUGHT ↗
- Who funds GLASSWING INTERNATIONAL USA INC ↗
- Who funds SHINING HOPE FOR COMMUNITIES INC ↗
- Who funds The Nudge Foundation ↗
- Who funds ARRAY EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds Friends International Inc ↗
- Who funds RESONATE WORKSHOPS ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds ECHOING GREEN INC ↗
- Who funds Medha Corp ↗
- Who funds TEAM RUBICON INC ↗
- Who funds GRIPTAPE ORG INC ↗
- Who funds TEAM WETHRIVE INC ↗
- Who funds MILLENNIUM CAMPUS NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds THE HETRICK-MARTIN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds LEILA JANAH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Texas Women'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: Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Tides Foundation · Skoll Fund · New Schools Fund · Gates Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Impactassetsinc · National Philanthropic Trust · Marin Community Foundation · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · American Endowment 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 Fossil 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.
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 Fossil Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Fossil 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.