· Private foundation
Good Words Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $95k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $835k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEBRASKA JOURNALISM TRUST | $150,000 |
| THE 19TH NEWS | $125,000 |
| CAPITAL B NEWS INC | $125,000 |
| CIVIC NEWS COMPANY | $100,000 |
| SPOTLIGHT PA | $100,000 |
| MADRID EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| GEORGETOWN PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $60,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA | $50,000 |
| RESOLVE PHILLY | $50,000 |
| AMALGAMATED FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION INC | $20,000 |
| ACTBLUE CIVICS INC | $10,000 |
| WOLF TRAP FOUNDATION FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS | $10,000 |
| NETWORK FOR GOOD | $10,000 |
| GEORGETOWN MINISTRY CENTER | $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 human-services grants (FY19–22, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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
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 +37% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 21 since wound down; 7 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $230k 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
PRO PUBLICA INC5× · 2019–2023 · $1.0M · revenue +64%
CIVIC NEWS COMPANY5× · 2020–2024 · $500k · revenue +37%- T1THE 19TH NEWS5× · 2020–2024 · $500k · revenue +77%
Funded once
INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT NEWSgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +101%- SPSPOTLIGHT PA GENERAL ACCOUNTone grant, 2023 · $100k
- VVVET VOICE FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $75k · revenue +232%
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.
CITY REPORT, INC. serves the people of New York through independent journalism that answers their information needs and holds the powerful to account.
Providing research, education and practical information all aimed at optimizing newspapers' business operations, deepening their community engagement and enhancing the quality of their journalism.
To organize pro-israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy americans to promote us policies that embody our deeply held jewish and democratic values and that help secure the state of israel as a democratic homeland for the jewish people.
To bring quality public television programs and resources to communities throughout new jersey and its tri-state neighbors. its content, both on-air and online, aims to reflect the diverse
National public radio, inc. ("npr") works collaboratively with member public radio station licensees ("member stations") to create a more informed public, one that is challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of…
The foundation's mission is to produce, support and promote high-quality journalism focused on underserved issue and focus areas in order to educate and inform the public and ensure widespread, ongoing public access to educational,…
Allbritton journalism institute aims to train a new generation of non-partisan political reporters from diverse backgrounds to produce high-quality, fact-based journalism.
The organization's mission is to be the first and best source of independent news analysis about the duke community and to develop outstanding student leaders through journalism.
The manhattan institute is a community of scholars, journalists, activists, and civic leaders dedicated to advancing opportunity, individual liberty, and the rule of law in america and its great cities.
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
States newsroom is the nation's largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, with reporting from every capital. every newsroom is led by a veteran local journalist with deep knowledge of the state's political history and media…
International consortium of investigative journalists, inc.'s (icij) mission is to show people how the world really works through stories that rock the world; forcing positive change.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Media Impact Funders Inc and the most unlike its peers is Big Stone Camp for Christ. 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 27 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.
55 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. 55 of the 76 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 PRO PUBLICA INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY ↗
- Who funds CIVIC NEWS COMPANY ↗
- Who funds THE 19TH NEWS ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL B NEWS INC ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA JOURNALISM TRUST ↗
- Who funds HENRY J KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLUB OF MADRID FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TREVOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds RESOLVE PHILADELPHIA INC ↗
- Who funds SPOTLIGHT PA ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT NEWS ↗
- Who funds THE HONORABLE TINA BROZMAN FDTN INC ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VET VOICE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds MADRID EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BROOKLYN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WISH4LIFE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JOURNALISM PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds EDMUND BURKE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds The King's College ↗
- Who funds Christ House ↗
- Who funds UNITED JEWISH APPEAL-FEDERATION OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS INC ↗
- Who funds DOW JONES NEWS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HELP IN PARK SLOPE 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: The Ford Foundation · Institute for Nonprofit News · Park Foundation Inc · The Miami Foundation Inc · The Lenfest Institute for Journalism Special Asset Fund of Tpf · The Nathan Cummings Foundation Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · John S and James L Knight Foundation · The Lazard Charitable Foundation · The Rockefeller Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Greater Washington Community 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 Good Words 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.
- Camp Harbor View Foundation Inc — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Good Words Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Good Words 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.