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· Public charity

Heterodox Academy

To improve the quality of research and education in universities by increasing open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.

$276k
Granted FY2022
10
Grants FY2022
10
States reached
$30k
Largest
01What you fund
01FY2022 · 10 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

The 10 grants below total $164,407 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $276,251 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $111,844 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 · FY2022

  • Under $10k3 grants · $23k
  • $10k–50k7 grants · $141k
$15,325
Median grant
10
States reached
$7.6M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
WMU FOUNDATION$30,000
URBAN RURAL ACTION$26,397
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE$22,319
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY$20,166
BRADLEY STUDY CENTER$15,325
TRINITY UNIVERSITY$15,100
SEVEN ACRES MONTESSORI$11,772
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE$8,368
LET GROW$8,310
THE PROGRAM FOR PUBLIC DISCOURSE AT UNC CHAPEL HILL$6,650
02The need
02

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY22–22, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%LET GROW: $8k → 17%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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

MI
NY
CT
CA
UT
VA
DE
NC
DC
TX

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.

03Your field

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.

1
University of New Haven

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…

Education
2
Trustees of Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.

Education
3
Lehigh University

The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…

Education
4
The George Washington University

The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…

Education
5
The Catholic University of America

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…

Education
6
Western New England University

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…

Education
7
Roger Williams University

At Roger Williams University, students are prepared to be thinkers and doers ready to solve challenging problems with innovative solutions. RWU offers robust offerings of undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across eight…

Education
8
DePauw University

Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…

Education
9
Wake Forest University

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…

Education
10
Delaware Valley University

See schedule o.we are inspired by the ideals of our founder who, in 1896, emphasized respect for all people and ideas, who honored knowledge with practice, progress and the common good. our historical commitment to experiential learning…

11
Trustees of Tufts College

Education and Research

Education
12
The Trustees of Princeton University

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…

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Delaware and the most unlike its peers is Urban Rural Action. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

03the grantee network

11 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
11/11
Grantees still filing
10/11
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE — $22,319 · OtherUNIVERSITY OF DELAWAREBRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY — $20,166 · OtherBRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITYREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT RIVERSIDE — $8,368 · OtherREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA…UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL — $6,650 · OtherUNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL …WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION — $30,000 · EducationWESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIONTrinity University — $15,100 · EducationTrinity UniversityGrumman Hill Montessori Association Inc — $11,772 · EducationGrumman Hill Montessori Association IncUrban Rural Action — $26,397 · Community ImprovementUrban Rural ActionCHRISTIAN SCHOLARS NETWORK INC — $15,325 · ReligionCHRISTIAN …LET GROW INC — $8,310 · Human Services
Other$57,503Education$56,872Community Improvement$26,397Religion$15,325Human Services$8,310

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetWESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION — $30,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetUrban Rural Action — $26,397 over 1y, 12% of budgetUNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE — $22,319 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCHRISTIAN SCHOLARS NETWORK INC — $15,325 over 1y, 7.3% of budgetTrinity University — $15,100 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetGrumman Hill Montessori Association Inc — $11,772 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetLET GROW INC — $8,310 over 2y, 0.9% of budget
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.

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.

Donor Advised Charitable Giving IncCA5.9× affinity4 shared granteesties to 1 of 1Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: 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 Heterodox Academy 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 00%1%4%8%15%your share of their income ↑0%25%50%75%100%share of the org’s income from governmentmedian 30%
  • University of Delaware30% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
0rely on government for over half their income
typical government reliance, FY2025

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.

04Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Heterodox Academy?

Find your warmest path to Heterodox Academy 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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 10 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

Generated from your IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2022, released 2022. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports $43k of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2022, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

Source object · view filing

More from the funding graph