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I Am a Leader Foundation at a glanceAlso receives grants: funding profile →

· Private foundation

I Am a Leader Foundation

Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$43k
Granted FY2023
11
Grants FY2023
5
States reached
$8k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
05Through PlinthRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2023.

Education$7.5MYouth Development$4.7MCrime & Legal$17kArts & Culture$4k
02FY2023 · 11 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$2,833
Median grant
5
States reached
$325k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Individual grant recipient$8,207
TH BELL JUNIOR HIGH$7,447
A PARLEY BATES ELEMENTARY$7,366
Individual grant recipient$6,349
Individual grant recipient$4,254
Individual grant recipient$2,833
Individual grant recipient$1,721
Individual grant recipient$1,531
Individual grant recipient$1,449
VALLEY VIEW ELEMENTARY$1,258
WILLIAM LAND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL$111
02The need
03

Where the grant dollars land

Across the US and around the world.

Which US states its grants reach

WA
ID
MN
IL
WI
MI
NY
MA
NV
IA
IN
OH
PA
NJ
CA
UT
CO
MO
KY
WV
VA
MD
DE
AZ
NM
KS
AR
TN
NC
HI
OK
LA
MS
AL
GA
TX
FL
How this is measured
Grants placed by each grantee’s location, read from the 990 filings.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

95%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$11M · 381 repeat orgs$552k to everyone else

381 repeat relationships: 8 still active in FY2023, 373 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

381
129

Total granted

$11M
$529k

Still filing today

2%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2023, 46% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $23k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • EC
    EAST CHICAGO URBAN ENTERPRISE ACADEMY INC
    4× · 2017–2020 · $72k · revenue +49%
  • FA
    FRIENDSHIP ACADEMY OF THE ARTS
    3× · 2017–2019 · $68k · revenue +86%
  • PV
    PRESCOTT VALLEY CHARTER SCHOOL
    2× · 2020–2021 · $20k · revenue +135%

Funded once

  • MS
    MISHAWAKA SCHOOL DISTRICT
    one grant, 2021 · $112k
  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    one grant, 2021 · $58k
  • BS
    BURNSIDE SCHOLASTIC ACADEMY
    one grant, 2018 · $49k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 6 of the 513 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
2
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/6
Grantees still filing
6/6
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

+194 more: $9,063,920 · Other+194 moreEAST CHICAGO URBAN ENTERPRISE ACADEMY INC: $72,047 · EducationFRIENDSHIP ACADEMY OF THE ARTS: $68,371 · EducationSUN VALLEY ACADEMY-AVONDALE INC: $36,705 · EducationPRESCOTT VALLEY CHARTER SCHOOL: $19,687 · EducationJERSEY CITY COMMUNITY CHARTER SCHOOL: $17,523 · EducationMINNESOTA MATH AND SCIENCE ACADEMY: $17,023 · Education
Other$9,063,920Education$231,356

Showing the 200 largest grantees by grant value.

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetEAST CHICAGO URBAN ENTERPRISE ACADEMY INC: $72,047 over 4y, 1.6% of budgetFRIENDSHIP ACADEMY OF THE ARTS: $68,371 over 3y, 2.5% of budgetPRESCOTT VALLEY CHARTER SCHOOL: $19,687 over 2y, 0.4% of budgetJERSEY CITY COMMUNITY CHARTER SCHOOL: $17,523 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetMINNESOTA MATH AND SCIENCE ACADEMY: $17,023 over 2y, 0.2% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds EAST CHICAGO URBAN ENTERPRISE ACADEMY INC ↗
  • Who funds FRIENDSHIP ACADEMY OF THE ARTS ↗

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a set of overlaps that mostly run through this funder rather than between each other.

Amazonsmile Foundation
Amazonsmile FoundationWA1.8× affinity4 shared granteesties to 0 of 0Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization I Am a Leader Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from I Am a Leader Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2025
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    5report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.
    05Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to I Am a Leader Foundation?

    Find your warmest path to I Am a Leader 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 513 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its 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.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2023, the most recent year this funder made grants.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on I Am a Leader’s filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home