· Public charity
Indianapolis Zoological Society Inc
We protect nature and inspire people to care for our world.
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 5 grants below total $153,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $561,555 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $408,555 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
- $10k–50k4 grants · $73k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $80k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Lincoln Park Zoological Society | $80,000 |
| University of Colorado | $25,000 |
| Sycamore Land Trust | $23,000 |
| University of North Carolina at Greensboro | $15,000 |
| Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders | $10,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 75% of your 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
Grants abroad, by region — $255k on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 5 regions. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: CONSERVATION
Stated purpose: CONSERVATION
Stated purpose: CONSERVATION
Stated purpose: CONSERVATION
Stated purpose: CONSERVATION
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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 +147% since the first grant, against +77% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 7 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, 52% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $73k 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
- LPLINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY8× · 2017–2024 · $420k · revenue +30%
- WCWildlife Conservation Society6× · 2017–2022 · $280k · revenue +59%
REWILD5× · 2017–2023 · $140k · revenue +550%
Funded once
- AAAMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ZOOLOGICAL PARKS AND AQUARIUMS INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +83%
- WWWIDECAST Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network Incone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue -77%
CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $25k · revenue +113%
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Wildlife alliance is the leader in direct protection of forests and wildlife in tropical asia. our mission is to combat deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, and poverty by partnering with local communities and governments.…
Panthera's mission is the conservation of the world's 40 wild cat species, many of which are endangered or threatened. panthera develops, implements and oversees wild cat conservation strategies on a global scale.
Awf's mission is to ensure wildlife and wild lands thrive in modern africa. we work to equip african governments, institutions, business, and communities with the tools, insights, and support they need to define, own, and realize a…
Endangered Species International is strongly committed to reversing the trend of human-induced species extinction, saving endangered animals, and preserving wild places.
Protecting india's precious wildlife from poaching, habitat loss, and human exploitation since 1995.
To advance conservation governance through political will and to provide "on the ground" solutions to ensure sustained economic benefits while managing the earth's natural resource wealth for future generations.
The wildlife society's mission is to inspire, empower, and enable wildlife professionals to sustain wildlife populations and habitats through science-based management and conservation.
Nature and culture international conserves biologically diverse landscapes in latin america, in concert with local cultures, for the well-being of the planet.
Protecting the world's remaining primates by monitoring and exposing illegal trade, supporting a worldwide network of overseas sanctuaries and ngo's, publicising the plight of abused primates, and operating a sanctuary for resued gibbons.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wildlife Conservation Network Inc and the most unlike its peers is Widecast Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network Inc. 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 35 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 — 0.0% 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 31 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 LINCOLN PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds REWILD ↗
- Who funds WORLD PARROT TRUST USA INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL ELEPHANT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Cheetah Conservation Fund ↗
- Who funds MARA ELEPHANT PROJECT USA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ZOOLOGICAL PARKS AND AQUARIUMS INC ↗
- Who funds WIDECAST Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle Conservation Network Inc ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CROCODILE SPECIALISTS USA INC ↗
- Who funds SYCAMORE LAND TRUST INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NORTH AMERICAN STURGEON & PADDLEFISH SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE TURTLE SURVIVAL ALLIANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STONY BROOK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds OKLAHOMA ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds IOWA BIRD REHABILITATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN CONSERVATION PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds Snow Leopard Conservancy ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL TROPICAL BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International Inc ↗
- Who funds SEWARD ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF MARINE SCIENCE ↗
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: Zoological Society of Cincinnati · Columbus Zoological Park Association · American Endowment Foundation · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Indianapolis Zoological Society Inc 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.