· Public charity
Hacking for Defense Incorporated
To enable powerful approaches to stimulating science, technology, invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship on university and college campuses, specifically directed toward solving real-world national security challenges.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 6 grants below total $87,740 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $165,147 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $77,407 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 · $19k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $69k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Y MWMBWLS LLC | $22,217 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT FOUNDATION INC | $22,000 |
| VALIS SYSTEMS | $14,800 |
| PHAROS AEROSPACE | $10,000 |
| ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $9,782 |
| CAMA SECURITY INC | $8,941 |
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 (FY19–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 57% 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 +43% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 5 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, 11% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $78k 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
- GMGEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC2× · 2021–2022 · $170k · revenue +6%
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY2× · 2022–2023 · $30k · revenue +53%- TATexas A&M Foundation2× · 2022–2023 · $30k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- ROREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SAN DIEGOone grant, 2023 · $30k
- NNEUROSMARTone grant, 2022 · $27k
- CMCarnegie Mellon Universitygraduated2× · 2022–2024 · $20k · revenue +26%
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 university of virginia investment management company (uvimco) is organized to invest funds on behalf of the rector and visitors of the university of virginia (the university or uva) and university-associated organizations (uaos).
The Indiana University Foundation (IUF) maximizes private philanthropic support for Indiana University by fostering lifelong relationships with key stakeholders and providing advancement leadership and fundraising services for (Continued…
The mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.
Claremont Graduate University prepares individuals to be leaders for positive change in the world. Unique in its transdisciplinary approach, the University is dedicated to the creation, dissemination, and application of new knowledge and…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
To provide administrative services to university of virginia (university) entities, university associated organizations, or other entities involved in activities which support the university. to engage in matters pertaining to real…
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
To generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University systems as they provide world-class teaching, push the boundaries of discovery, and achieve excellence in patient healthcare for…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Colorado State University Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Center for a New American Security Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 33 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 GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Texas A&M Foundation ↗
- Who funds Rochester Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Carnegie Mellon University ↗
- Who funds COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Center for a New American Security 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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: American Online Giving Foundation 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 Hacking for Defense Incorporated 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.
- University of Central Florida Research Foundation Inc — 10% 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 Hacking for Defense Incorporated?
Find your warmest path to Hacking for Defense Incorporated 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.