· Public charity
Foundation of the American Board of Trial Advocates
To preserve, promote, and improve the American civil justice system and the Seventh Amendment right to civil jury trials for future generations.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 59% of Foundation of the American Board of Trial Advocates’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 11 grants below total $216,824 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $238,324 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $21,500 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
- Under $10k2 grants · $12k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $127k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $78k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEX-ABOTA Inc | $78,353 |
| Delaware Law Related Education Center Inc | $24,000 |
| Teach Democracy | $22,500 |
| Monroe County Bar Association | $20,000 |
| Loyola Law School | $15,000 |
| Arizona Bar Foundation (Arizona Foundation for Legal Services & Education) | $15,000 |
| Center for Youth Development Through Law | $10,000 |
| Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts | $10,000 |
| Civics Learning Project | $10,000 |
| Tampa Bay Chapter of ABOTA | $6,596 |
| Mecklenburg Bar Foundation | $5,375 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY19–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 79% of your 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 +45% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 6 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, 55% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $97k 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
- CLCivics Learning Project4× · 2020–2024 · $55k · revenue +45%
- TDTeach Democracy4× · 2019–2023 · $55k · revenue +223%
- LMLOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY2× · 2019–2024 · $30k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- ABAMERICAN BOARD OF TRIAL ADVOCATESone grant, 2022 · $76k
- NCNATIONAL CENTER FOR STATE COURTSgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +68%
- AMAMERICAN MOCK TRIAL ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue +41%
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 ohio center for law related education is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that encourages participation in our democracy through active learning programs about law and citizenship for educators and students involving volunteers…
The objectives and goals of the institute shall be to receive and administer funds for the purpose of providing and supporting educational programs for lawyers, legal academics, and members of the judiciary, conferences and publications…
The institute's mission, as set out in its certificate of incorporation, is to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to…
The american bar foundation (abf) seeks to expand knowledge and advance justice through innovative, interdisciplinary, and rigorous empirical research on law, legal processes, and legal institutions. to further this mission the abf…
The mission of the school is to provide outstanding legal education in a collegial and supportive environment with attention to newly emerging areas of law, particularly those related to technological development, globalization and the…
The only law school in Rhode Island, Roger Williams University School of Law offers future attorneys a rigorous, hands-on legal education in a supportive, personalized environment. Preparing students for success in the public and private…
The purposes of the arkansas bar association include the following: advance the administration of justice; foster and maintain on the part of attorneys high ideals of integrity, learning, competence and public service, and high standards…
Enhance the ability of actec members to provide the most efficient and highest quality services to their clients; develop qualified trust and estate counselors; improve and reform probate, trust and tax laws, procedures, and standards of…
The purposes for which the corporation is organized are to provide a means for defense trial lawyers and others to be heard, state a position and motivate reform of the United States civil justice system. See Schedule O
New england law/boston dedicates itself to preparing students to be successful lawyers and leaders in the public and private sectors through integrated practical, theoretical and ethical education of the highest caliber and to contributing…
The north carolina bar association is organized for the purposes of promoting and improving the administration of justice in north carolina; fostering and encouraging law reform when in the public interest; advancing the science of…
Minnesota state bar association promotes the highest standards of excellence and inclusion within the legal profession, provides valued resources to its members, and strives to improve the law and the equal administration of justice for…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Arizona Foundation for Legal Services & Education and the most unlike its peers is Arkansas Mock Trial Foundation 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 39 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 32 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 Civics Learning Project ↗
- Who funds Teach Democracy ↗
- Who funds Center For Youth Development Through Law ↗
- Who funds TEXAS WATCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR STATE COURTS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN MOCK TRIAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL JUDICIAL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ↗
- Who funds DELAWARE LAW RELATED EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE MONROE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ARKANSAS MOCK TRIAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Michigan Center for Civic Education ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA MOCK TRIAL PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA FOUNDATION FOR LEGAL SERVICES & EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds THE RENDELL CENTER FOR CIVICS AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIANS FOR MODERN COURTS ↗
- Who funds Illinois Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds INDIANA BAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Mecklenburg Bar Foundation ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS FOUNDATION 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: American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 of the American Board of Trial Advocates 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.
- Delaware Law Related Education Center Inc — 53% 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.