· Public charity
Foundation For Excellence in Higher Education
Established in 2012 as an independent, non-partisan, grant-making organization, the Foundation For Excellence in Higher Education, inc ("fehe") funds and advises programs at elite universities where the next generation of cultural leaders are formed.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 17 grants below total $5,547,565 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $9,160,574 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $3,613,009 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 · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $66k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $793k
- $250k+10 grants · $4.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The Trustees of Columbia University | $1,250,000 |
| The Morningside Institute | $622,215 |
| The Abigail Adams Institute | $490,000 |
| Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania | $420,000 |
| Collegium Institute | $377,000 |
| ELM INSTITUTE | $332,424 |
| Austin Institute FSOFC | $325,000 |
| The Berkeley Institute | $322,722 |
| Harvard University | $300,000 |
| Hyde Park Institute | $250,000 |
| The Witherspoon Institute | $208,000 |
| Forbes Avenue Foundation | $200,000 |
| Zephyr Institute | $184,573 |
| The Houston Institute | $125,000 |
| University of Illinois Foundation | $75,000 |
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 — 79% of grant dollars ($27M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 21% that went abroad ($7.3M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY20–24, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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 — 21% of all-years giving ($7.3M)
1 country, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
Grants abroad, by region — $3.4M on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 1 region. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: Scholarship, general
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 990filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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 Foundation For Excellence in Higher Education’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.
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 +5% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100k 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
- TMThe Morningside Institute Inc5× · 2020–2024 · $2.6M · revenue +123% · 92% of their budget
- TAThe Abigail Adams Institute Inc5× · 2020–2024 · $2.1M · revenue +79% · 40% of their budget
- CICollegium Institute5× · 2020–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +78% · 55% of their budget
Funded once
- AAAmerican Academy of Sciences and Letters Incgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $750k · revenue +45% · 50% of their budget
- TAThe Aquinas Institute for Catholic Life at Princeton University Incone grant, 2023 · $426k · revenue -13%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue +5%
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.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…
The Center of Theological Inquiry is an independent research institution with an international visiting scholar program which convenes researchers in an ideal setting for interdisciplinary inquiries where theology casts light on global…
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
See Schedule O. See explanation for Form 990, Part I, Line 1 - Organization's Mission above.
The institute's mission is to conduct research on key issues facing society to help both the church and society deal thoughtfully with the major issues they face globally. the institute also sponsors and conducts research and scholarship…
Since 1775, the mission of Hampden-Sydney College has been to form good men and good citizens in an atmosphere of sound learning.
Union Institute & University educates highly motivated adults who seek academic programs to engage, enlighten, and empower them to pursue professional goals and a lifetime of learning and service. Offering accredited bachelors, masters,…
Philosophical education
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hyde Park Institute and the most unlike its peers is Academic Freedom Alliance. 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 13 years old; the field is 16. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 37 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 Morningside Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds The Abigail Adams Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds Witherspoon Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds Collegium Institute ↗
- Who funds THE BERKELEY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Elm Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds HYDE PARK INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ZEPHYR INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds AUSTIN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF FAMILY AND CULTURE ↗
- Who funds Academic Freedom Alliance ↗
- Who funds American Academy of Sciences and Letters Inc ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Byrne Institute ↗
- Who funds The Aquinas Institute for Catholic Life at Princeton University Inc ↗
- Who funds FORBES AVENUE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds HIPPOCRATIC SOCIETY ↗
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: Witherspoon Institute Inc · Apgar Foundation Inc · Donors Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 Foundation For Excellence in Higher Education 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% 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.
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Find your warmest path to Foundation For Excellence in Higher Education 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.