· Public charity
Friends of the Earth
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the environment and enhances people's well being and by building movements in the u.s.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 21 grants below total $887,096 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,052,897 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $165,801 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 $10k2 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $238k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $272k
- $250k+1 grant · $360k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRIENDS OF THE EARTH (ACTION) INC | $360,000 |
| MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA | $92,000 |
| A WELL-FED WORLD | $80,000 |
| ACTION FOR THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY | $50,000 |
| CHECK MY ADS INSTITUTE | $50,000 |
| REBUILD DEMOCRACY | $42,750 |
| CHARLESTON COMM RESTO ACT BOARD | $25,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT | $20,000 |
| PARENTS ENGAGING PARENTS INC | $20,000 |
| SUSSEX HEALTH & ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK INC | $20,000 |
| EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE | $20,000 |
| DELAWARE COMMUNITY BENEFITS AGREEMENT COALITION | $15,000 |
| NEBRASKA COMMUNITIES UNITED | $12,360 |
| CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY | $11,000 |
| BLACK VEG SOCIETY | $11,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $68k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 85% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 58% of Friends of the Earth’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, 64% of the giving stays in DC; read by stated purpose it is 9% — less 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +3% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 10 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, 62% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $340k 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
- FOFRIENDS OF THE EARTH (ACTION) INC9× · 2017–2025 · $2.7M · revenue +39% · 40% of their budget
- MMMEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA2× · 2023–2025 · $174k · revenue +12%
- GAGlobal Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives2× · 2023–2024 · $100k · revenue +3%
Funded once
- LOLEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUNDgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $150k · revenue +353%
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATEDgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $50k · revenue +48%- YFYES FOR HEALTH AND SAFETY OVER FRACKINGone grant, 2017 · $50k
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.
Our mission is to fight against fossil fuel executives and industries that have turned our communities into dumping grounds for toxic waste, poisoning our air, water, lan, and bodies. We organize to oppose giant oil refineries, dirty…
The Breakthrough Institute is a research center that identifies and promotes technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges.
The Corporation is organized exclusively for charitable and educational purposes. Earthworks is dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the impacts of irresponsible mineral and energy development while seeking…
Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) uses data-driven advocacy and litigation to fight for forests, communities and the climate.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
E3g is a leading international not-for-profit think tank specialising in climate diplomacy harnessing expertise in the politics and economics of climate change.
International Rivers protects rivers and defends the rights of communities that depend on them.
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Savannah River Site Watch. 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 22 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
63 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. 63 of the 68 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 FRIENDS OF THE EARTH (ACTION) INC ↗
- Who funds MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds SOUTH WARD ENVIRONMENTAL ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds GOODPOWER EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives ↗
- Who funds Ironbound Community Corporation ↗
- Who funds A Well-Fed World ↗
- Who funds West Harlem Environmental Action Inc ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds GreenLatinos ↗
- Who funds NAMATI INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Check My Ads Institute ↗
- Who funds CATALYST CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds Savannah River Site Watch ↗
- Who funds REBUILD DEMOCRACY ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds GREENFAITH INC ↗
- Who funds Harambee House Inc ↗
- Who funds COHARIE INTRA-TRIBAL COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY GULF ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE AGRICULTURE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLESTON COMMUNITY RESEARCH TO ACTION BOARD ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Earth Island Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds LOWCOUNTRY ALLIANCE FOR MODEL COMMUNITIE ↗
- Who funds DEMOCRACY INITIATIVE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PARENTS ENGAGING PARENTS ↗
- Who funds SUSSEX HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL NET ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATES NY INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN ALLIANCE FOR CLEAN ENERGY ↗
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: Tides Foundation · The Schmidt Family Foundation · Windward Fund · United States Energy Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Patagoniaorg · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · New Venture Fund · Climateworks Foundation · Solutions Project Inc · The Energy Foundation · Natural Resources Defense Council Inc
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 Friends of the Earth 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.
- Ironbound Community Corporation — 100% of income from government
- Lewis & Clark College — 2% 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.