· Private foundation
Heisman Trophy Trust
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
78% of Heisman Trophy Trust’s FY2024 grant dollars went to The New York Community Trust, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 19 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2017, the last year Heisman Trophy Trust named its own grantees at scale: 28 organizations, $2M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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.
By grant size · FY2017
- Under $10k16 grants · $110k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $381k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $281k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Community Funds Inc | $1,207,000 |
| Athlife Foundation Inc | $75,000 |
| DonorsChooseorg | $56,300 |
| LUCY Outreach | $50,000 |
| Page Education Foundation | $50,000 |
| Disable Sports USA | $50,000 |
| Habitat for Humanity International | $40,000 |
| Desire Street Ministries | $32,500 |
| United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Hartford | $30,000 |
| Tim Tebow Foundation | $27,500 |
| Summerhill Community Ministries Inc | $26,000 |
| First Tee of Metro NY | $25,000 |
| Urban Promise Trenton | $25,000 |
| Manchester Public Schools | $24,000 |
| The Doug Flutie Jr Foundation for Autism | $23,500 |
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 (FY20–22, $50k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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 +23% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2017, 27 since wound down; 103 grantees were first funded in FY2017 (too recent to call). Read against FY2017, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 37% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $354k 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
- DDONORSCHOOSEORG8× · 2017–2024 · $283k · revenue +24%
- TTTIM TEBOW FOUNDATION INC7× · 2017–2024 · $178k · revenue +684%
- TVTHE V FOUNDATION3× · 2022–2024 · $75k · revenue +61%
Funded once
- CFCOMMUNITY FUNDS INCone grant, 2017 · $1.2M
- KKALEIDOSCOPEone grant, 2024 · $118k
- TDThe Defensive Line Incone grant, 2024 · $75k
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 leadership foundation, inc. (the foundation), established in 1990, is the mechanism by which iwf members advance the next generation of women leaders. the foundation accelerates the careers of top-performing women by offering…
To bring tennis & education together to change lives, with particular emphasis on under-resourced youth. using this powerful combination, we help serve up dreams.
To accelerate breakthroughs by providing today's best young scientists with funding to pursue innovative cancer research. the foundation's goals are to identify and fund the best and brightest early-career scientists in cancer research;…
The cal ripken, sr. foundation helps to strengthen america's most underserved and distressed communities by supporting and advocating for children, building youth development parks, partnering with law enforcement and youth service…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
See schedule othe marine corps scholarship foundation is the nation's oldest and largest provider of need-based scholarships to military children. founded in 1962, the marine corps scholarship foundation provides access to education for…
To champion all students to and through their education and into careers as professional technicians.
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.
The foundation raises national awareness about the high school completion crisis and impact on our nation's youth, economy and national security. our efforts are primarily directed to developing, supporting and enhancing the national guard…
The mission of the daniel murphy scholarship fund is to give high school scholarship assistance and educational support to chicago students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. the fund seeks to make a life-altering difference in…
With love and respect, we partner with opportunity youth to build the skillsets and mindsets that lead to lifelong learning, livelihood, and leadership. youthbuild strives to create a world where all young people are seen for their…
We believe every texas student deserves the opportunity to earn a postsecondary credential or degree that helps them achieve the future they envision for themselves and their families. we invest in the programs, practices, and policies…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Dynamite Youth Center Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Matt Leinart Foundation. 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 22 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
86 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. 86 of the 148 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 THE NEW YORK COMMUNITY TRUST ↗
- Who funds DONORSCHOOSEORG ↗
- Who funds TIM TEBOW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Desire Street Ministries ↗
- Who funds THE TORRETTA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds JOHNNY RODGERS YOUTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Defensive Line Inc ↗
- Who funds CURTIS GRANDERSON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HARLEM RBI INC ↗
- Who funds ATHLIFE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ELS FOR AUTISM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE V FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CRISTO REY NEW YORK HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds HBC FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds George Rogers Foundation of the Carolinas Inc ↗
- Who funds THE DOUG FLUTIE JR FOUNDATION FOR AUTISM INC ↗
- Who funds PAGE EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LUCY OUTREACH A NJ NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds MOVE UNITED ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds DR JOHN E UPLEDGER FOUNDATIONINC ↗
- Who funds COASTAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF SOUTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE TENNESSEE INC ↗
- Who funds TRENTON KAPPA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WUERFFEL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF NEW YORK CITY INC ↗
- Who funds THE DAVID ROBINSON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Marty Lyons Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds SUMMERHILL COMMUNITY MINISTRIES 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: Nfl Foundation Inc · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Moglia Family Foundation · The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation · Chubb Charitable Foundation · Verizon Foundation · Morgan Stanley Foundation Inc · Community Foundation of New Jersey · Mutual of America Foundation · American Express Foundation · Amica Companies Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Heisman Trophy Trust 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.
- Move United — 16% of income from government
- Doc Wayne Inc — 15% of income from government
- Annapolis Maritime Museum Inc — 2% of income from government
- Urbanpromise Trenton Inc — 0% 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 Heisman Trophy Trust?
Find your warmest path to Heisman Trophy Trust 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.