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· Public charity
Friends Of The Legal Services
To promote the need for equal access to the justice system and provide legal assistance to those who cannot afford.
$250k
Granted FY2021
1
Grants
1
Communities
$250k
Largest
01What you fund
01
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 40% of Friends Of The Legal Services’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.
02beneath the categories
Past the labels — and the year it shifted
Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.
…and in their own words, year by year
2019
—
2020
indian
2021
—
Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2021 · 1 grant
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
$250,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$9.5M
Total assets
Largest grants
- LEGAL SERVICE CORPORATION$250,000
02The need
04
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.
show:
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY19–21) land where the poverty rate runs at 15% — the area typically sits at 12%. 89% of your dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your field
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.
1
Legal Services of Northern Michigan
To be a public law firm that knows, as well as understands, the problems of even the poorest in our communities and addresses these problems through education, and with creative legal advocacy of the highest distinction. LSNM will be seen…
Crime & Legal
2
Florida Legal Services Inc
To provide and serve as a leader in the state of florida, to encourage the provision of high quality legal services for the poor and provide support and assistance to all providers of legal assistance to the poor throughout the state.
—
3
Legal Aid Services of Oregon
The primary purpose of legal aid services of oregon shall be to achieve justice for the low-income communities of oregon by providing a full range of the highest quality civil legal services.
Crime & Legal
4
Alaska Legal Services Corporation
To provide meaningful access to justice in resolving civil legal problems for low-income clients, thus promoting family stability and reducing legal consequences of poverty.
Crime & Legal
5
Legal Services Corp of Delaware
Provision of legal services.
Crime & Legal
6
Legal Aid Service of Northeastern
Our mission is to provide civil legal service to low-income clients. our legal services provide basic protection for our clients by enforcing the law when their rights have been violated, promote the self-sufficiency of individuals…
Crime & Legal
7
Lakeshore Legal Aid
Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.
Crime & Legal
8
Virginia Legal Aid Society Inc
Virginia Legal Aid Society, Inc. is a non-profit organization organized to provide legal assistance in non-criminal proceedings or matters to persons financially unable to afford legal assistance.
Crime & Legal
9
Volunteer Legal Services
To help low-income clients access the civil justice system by providing volunteer attorneys who donate free legal advice and representation, and by supporting and training those attorneys.
Crime & Legal
10
Neighborhood Legal Services
A steadfast advocate for individuals, families, and communities throughout LA County.
—
11
Legal Services of Northern Virginia Inc
Legal services of northern virginia's mission is to promote justice by providing free, high-quality legal advocacy and information for elderly, disabled, and low-income individuals and families who face the loss of a critical need, such as…
Crime & Legal
12
Texas Legal Services Center Inc
To expand access to justice and legal advocacy for low-income Texans.
Crime & Legal
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Puerto Rico Legal Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Oficina Legal De La Comunidad Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
05the grantee network
8 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2024.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
8/8
Grantees still filing
7/8
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Crime & Legal$436,689Other$293,620
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 LEGAL SERVICE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Legal Services of North Florida ↗
- Who funds LEGAL SERVICES OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS ↗
- Who funds OFICINA LEGAL DE LA COMUNIDAD ↗
- Who funds PUERTO RICO LEGAL SERVICES INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN INDIAN LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN SAMOA LEGAL AID ↗
- Who funds ANISHINABE LEGAL SERVICES ↗
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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Legal Services CorporationDC18.1× affinity6 shared granteesties to 0 of 0Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: Legal Services Corporation
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 organisation Friends Of The Legal Services 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.
2024
’20’21’22’23’24
- Legal Services of North — 27% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
typical government reliance, FY20–24
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. 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.
04Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: AMERICAN SAMOA LEGAL AID.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
medium risk
~5 months of operating runway; revenue contracted over 5 filed years.
Track record & reputation
low risk
5 years of Form 990 filings, still active.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 900835586 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on AMERICAN SAMOA LEGAL AID, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- WatchFinancial stability— Roughly 5 months of cash on hand.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue contracted over the period.
- On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 10% of their budget — diversified.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Friends Of The Legal Services?
Find your warmest path to Friends Of The Legal Services through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines