· Public charity
Institute for Local Self Reliance
To provide the conceptual framework, strategies, and information to aid the creation of ecologically-sound and equitable communities.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2022–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 13 grants below total $1,302,424 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,357,821 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $55,397 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 · $90k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $587k
- $250k+1 grant · $625k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| POWERSWITCH ACTION | $625,000 |
| RECAST CITY LLC | $183,918 |
| COMMUNITY POWER | $125,000 |
| UNITED FOR RESPECT EDUCATION FUND | $67,506 |
| PHILADELPHIA JOBS WITH JUSTICE | $55,000 |
| THE AWOOD CENTER | $52,000 |
| DEMAND PROGRESS EDUCATION FUND | $52,000 |
| MAKE THE ROAD STATES INC | $52,000 |
| GOOD JOBS FIRST | $25,000 |
| BK ROT INC | $20,000 |
| PENOBSCOT TRIBAL FARM | $20,000 |
| BUSINESS EDUCATION FUND | $15,000 |
| 350 SEATTLE | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY22–25, $297k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 26% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +21% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 5 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $215k 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
- SUSolar United Neighbors Inc3× · 2022–2024 · $534k · revenue +123%
- MWMissouri Workers Center2× · 2023–2024 · $224k · revenue +178%
- SASOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC3× · 2022–2024 · $217k · revenue +53%
Funded once
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITYone grant, 2023 · $150k · revenue +22%- FFFIGHT FOR THE FUTURE EDUCATION FUNDgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $120k · revenue +189%
- WWWarehouse Workers Justice Center Incone grant, 2023 · $100k
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.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
To educate workers and the public about policies that will build a clean energy economy at the scale climate science demands, create good union jobs, and create more equitable communities.
The organization serves as a coalition of labor organizations, community groups, faith-based organizations, and student groups dedicated to protecting the rights of working people. To this end, the corporation shall engage in organizing…
Taproot Earth works with communities to support strategies around the use of water, energy and land.
We are workers, united across different industries to improve our working conditions and our lives. We come together as working people to build power through education, organizing, and enforcement. We work to raise and uphold standards in…
Common future is a network of pioneering leaders across the u.s. and canada who work deeply within their communities to create alternative approaches to business, philanthropy, and investing. we envision an economy that has transitioned…
Fund for Justice is a nationally connected social impact research and advocacy organization that works to achieve fundamental, systemic reform by addressing policies and practicies that prevent individuals from reaching their full…
Workers Rights
To empower frontline communities to lead nature-based solutions that advance climate justice, ecosystem restoration, and resilient livelihoods through connecting locally-led initiatives to funding, markets, and technical support.
Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) uses data-driven advocacy and litigation to fight for forests, communities and the climate.
The Alliance for Collective Action convenes leaders of environmental and social movements to advance solutions for a thriving planet. We advance our mission through the Alliance Center building and community, as well as through Collective…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is CEEDS4CHANGE. 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 18 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 43 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 POWERSWITCH ACTION ↗
- Who funds Solar United Neighbors Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY POWER ↗
- Who funds Missouri Workers Center ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE AWOOD CENTER ↗
- Who funds Alliance for Global Justice Corp ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Warehouse Workers Justice Center Inc ↗
- Who funds BUSINESS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Make The Road States Inc ↗
- Who funds United for Respect Education Fund ↗
- Who funds GOOD JOBS FIRST ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA AREA JOBS WITH JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds DEMAND PROGRESS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds DEFENDING RIGHTS AND DISSENT INC ↗
- Who funds ALIGN THE ALLIANCE FOR A GREATER NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds CLEAN WATER FUND ↗
- Who funds THE EQUAL RIGHTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL VILLAGE FARMS INC ↗
- Who funds Garden Time Inc ↗
- Who funds 350 Seattle ↗
- Who funds The Center for Media Justice DBA MediaJustice ↗
- Who funds NEW HAVEN ECOLOGY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE'S SOLAR ENERGY FUND ↗
- Who funds BK ROT INC ↗
- Who funds POCASSET POKANOKET LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY OVERSIGHT PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds CEEDS4CHANGE ↗
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: New Venture Fund · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · Tides Foundation · Windward Fund · Proteus Fund Inc · United States Energy Foundation · Powerswitch Action · Jobs with Justice Education Fund · Impactassetsinc · Omidyar Network Fund Inc · Freedom Together 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 Institute for Local Self Reliance 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.
- New Haven Ecology Project Inc — 9% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% 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 Institute for Local Self Reliance?
Find your warmest path to Institute for Local Self Reliance 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.