· Public charity
Hearing Health Foundation
HEARING HEALTH FOUNDATION's mission is to prevent and cure hearing loss and tinnitus through groundbreaking research.
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 23 grants below total $2,290,548 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,475,548 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $185,000 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
- $10k–50k5 grants · $225k
- $50k–250k17 grants · $1.8M
- $250k+1 grant · $260k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE SPA OFFICE | $259,742 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON | $200,000 |
| NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DEAFNESS AND OTHER COMMUNICATION DISORDERS (NIDCD) | $190,000 |
| MASS EYE & EAR | $175,000 |
| BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY | $175,000 |
| THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $130,000 |
| BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE SPONSORED PROGRAMS OFFICE | $125,000 |
| CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY | $114,000 |
| OREGON HEALTH & SCIENCE UNIVERSITY | $100,000 |
| STOWERS INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH | $100,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH OFFICE OF SPONSORED PROGRAMS | $100,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA | $97,000 |
| BOSTON CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $50,000 |
| THE RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR THE SUNY ON BEHALF OF UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO | $50,000 |
| JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE OFFICE OF RESEARCH ADMINISTRATI | $50,000 |
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 (FY23–23, $50k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +62% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 3 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $125k 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
- BCBaylor College of Medicine8× · 2017–2025 · $851k · revenue +67%
- SISTOWERS INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH5× · 2017–2025 · $495k · revenue +19%
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY5× · 2021–2025 · $350k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- ROREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT RIVERSIDEone grant, 2018 · $55k
- TOTHE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2019 · $50k
WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTEone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +14%
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.
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
Wake Forest University, a 501(c)(3) institution of higher education, is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the liberal arts and in graduate and professional education. The organization is comprised of seven constituent parts: Wake…
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Case Western Reserve University is an independent, research-oriented university with broadly based strengths in health, including medicine, nursing and dentistry; in engineering; in the arts and sciences; and in law, management and social…
The mission of Rush is to improve the health of the individuals and diverse communities we serve through the integration of outstanding patient care, education, research and community partnerships.
We educate the next generation of leaders to improve the health of our society.
As the national university of the catholic church in the united states, founded and sponsored by the bishops of the country with the approval of the holy see, the catholic university of america is committed to being a comprehensive…
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
The trustees of the university of pennsylvania (the "university") sees itself as having a public service mission. in such regard, the university aims to provide a rich and diverse educational environment for its students; to pioneer…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
University of minnesota physicians serves as the integrated group practice for the university of minnesota medical school full-time faculty to provide the highest quality healthcare to patients and their families.university of minnesota…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Carnegie Mellon University and the most unlike its peers is Father Flanagan's Boys' Home. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 61 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 — 2% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 55 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 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS EYE & EAR INFIRMARY ↗
- Who funds STOWERS INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds Creighton University ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds The Research Foundation for The State University of New York ↗
- Who funds OREGON HEALTH & SCIENCE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Corporation ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds University of Miami ↗
- Who funds WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds Father Flanagan's Boys' Home ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
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: Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Hearing Health 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% of income from government
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute — 8% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Oregon Health & Science University Foundation — 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 Hearing Health Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Hearing Health 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.