· Public charity
Hacks Hackers
The organization exists to bring together journalists (hacks) and technologists (hackers) who are leaders in their sectors to advance media innovation and foster public trust in the information ecosystem.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 7 grants below total $1,053,224 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,078,336 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $25,112 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 $10k1 grant · $6k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $112k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $212k
- $250k+1 grant · $724k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON | $723,688 |
| CODINGSCAPE | $111,863 |
| DISCOURSE LABS | $100,200 |
| CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA | $45,146 |
| SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL | $40,827 |
| NATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION COALITION INC | $26,000 |
| WIKIMEDIA DC | $5,500 |
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 (FY22–23, $223k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 70% of Hacks Hackers’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.
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.
8 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 4 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $244k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON4× · 2020–2024 · $1.4M
- KFKNOWLEDGE FUTURES INC2× · 2022–2023 · $223k · revenue -81%
- SSSOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL3× · 2020–2024 · $220k · revenue -32%
Funded once
- TCTHE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIAone grant, 2023 · $186k · revenue +21%
- POPRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGEone grant, 2019 · $50k · revenue +20%
- HHINTSAIone grant, 2019 · $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.
Orcid provides an identifier for individuals to use with their name as they engage in research, scholarship, and innovation activities. we provide open tools that enable transparent and trustworthy connections between researchers, their…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
Develops legal and technical infrastructure for digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
The organization's mission is to leverage web-technologies to improve civic engagement and voter education.
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.
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
The missions is to provide information and resources to counter disinformation, propaganda, and offer a window to trusted content about the events that are going on in the Middle East.
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. Pew Research Center generates a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue and…
Advocating for public policies that advance democratic values in the digital age.
Epic's mission is to secure the fundamental right to privacy in the digital age for all people through advocacy, research, and litigation.
Finreglab is a d.c.-based research organization working at the intersection of financial innovation and public policy. our mission is to advance technology and data use to help people and small businesses manage their financial lives,…
At the internet society foundation, we focus on funding initiatives that strengthen the internet in function and reach so that it can effectively serve all people. our work advances the vision of the internet society (isoc): the internet…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wikimedia Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Colab Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 23 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 KNOWLEDGE FUTURES INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds COLAB INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds Meedan Inc ↗
- Who funds DISCOURSE LABS INC ↗
- Who funds PRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HACKS HACKERS ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds MOZILLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HEXLABS INC ↗
- Who funds ART FEMINISM INC ↗
- Who funds MUCKROCK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Wiki Society of Washington DC 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: John S and James L Knight Foundation · The Ford Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · 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 Hacks Hackers 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.
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 Hacks Hackers?
Find your warmest path to Hacks Hackers 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.