· Public charity
Institute for Sustainable Communities
The INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES (isc) is an international, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that brings partners, expertise, and funding to communities that are most vulnerable to climate change and the effect it has on the lives of people in the u.s.
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 · FY2024
- $10k–50k8 grants · $200k
- $50k–250k18 grants · $1.4M
- $250k+1 grant · $484k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ATMA CONNECT | $484,441 |
| EMERALD CITIES COLLABORATIVE | $144,661 |
| GROUNDWORK OHIO RIVER VALLEY | $129,583 |
| TIDES CENTER | $119,900 |
| NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING SERVICES OF SOUTH FLORIDA | $117,500 |
| PACOIMA BEAUTIFUL | $117,500 |
| ASIAN PACIFIC ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK | $100,000 |
| JASTECH DEVELOPMENT SERVICES INC | $97,000 |
| URBAN SUSTAINABILITY DIRECTORS NETWORK | $76,274 |
| THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND | $62,242 |
| YOUTH MINISTRIES FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE | $50,000 |
| POWER 52 | $50,000 |
| EMANCIPATION ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL | $50,000 |
| EASTSIDE COMMUNITY NETWORK | $50,000 |
| LA MUJER OBRERA | $50,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $1.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 39% 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.
26 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 8 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, 54% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $909k 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
- HGHEALTHY GULF6× · 2019–2024 · $710k · revenue +196%
WALNUT WAY CONSERVATION CORPORATION7× · 2018–2024 · $555k · revenue +119%- PIPOWER52 INC6× · 2019–2024 · $453k · revenue +120%
Funded once
GROUNDED SOLUTIONS NETWORKgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $470k · revenue +131%- ELELEVATE LLCone grant, 2023 · $276k
- PFPARTNERSHIP FOR SOUTHERN EQUITYone grant, 2023 · $143k · revenue -32%
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.
To cultivate leaders and community partnerships to advance environmental justice.
Taproot Earth works with communities to support strategies around the use of water, energy and land.
Active San Gabriel Valley (ActiveSGV) is a community-based environmental advocacy and public health non-profit organization. Our mission is to promote a more sustainable, equitable, and livable San Gabriel Valley.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
Rogue Climate's mission is to empower Southern Oregon communities most impacted by climate change including low-income, rural, youth, seniors & communities of color, to win climate justice by organizing for clean energy, sustainable jobs &…
The Boulder Watershed Collective is a 501c3 non-profit stakeholder-driven organization established to address forested watershed health,resiliency and stewardship. We have three program areas: ClimateAdaptation and Resilience Watershed…
To offer the dignity of fair employment to people living in impoverished communities, who become transformational agents of global forest restoration.
Environment next supports individuals, nonprofits and businesses around the world on solutions to complex climate issues. we provide leadership, outreach and communication support, grants, and investments to empower leaders and their ideas…
We activate community power to redesign social systems to be just and equitable for all through (1) developing and supporting leaders and organizations and (2) leading campaigns, coalitions, and innovative initiatives.
DC Greens advances health equity by building a just and resilient food system.
Rainier Beach Action Coalition is a grassroot, Black-led organization devoted to locally driven development. It promotes quality education, living wage jobs, affordable transportation and housing, and building community capacity in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Groundwork Ohio River Valley Inc and the most unlike its peers is People's Justice Council. 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 19 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 6% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 52 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 HEALTHY GULF ↗
- Who funds WALNUT WAY CONSERVATION CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Atma Connect ↗
- Who funds GROUNDED SOLUTIONS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds POWER52 INC ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY COMMUNITY RESOURCES AND ADVOCACY INC ↗
- Who funds TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIO ↗
- Who funds Asian Pacific Environmental Network ↗
- Who funds WE STAY-NOS QUEDAMOS INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA INDIAN MUSEUM & CULTURAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds Garfield Park Community Council ↗
- Who funds LIVING CLASSROOMS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTRO DEL OBRERO FRONTERIZO INC ↗
- Who funds GROUNDWORK OHIO RIVER VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds WARRENCONNER DEVELOPMENT COALITION ↗
- Who funds JASTECH DEVELOPMENT SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds EMANCIPATION ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds UNLIMITED POTENTIAL INC ↗
- Who funds Emerald Cities Collaborative Inc ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds PARTNERSHIP FOR SOUTHERN EQUITY ↗
- Who funds THUNDER VALLEY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COR ↗
- Who funds PACOIMA BEAUTIFUL ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING SERVICES OF SOUTH FLORIDA ↗
- Who funds GREENROOTS INC ↗
- Who funds Houston Advanced Research Center ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds INTERSTATE RENEWABLE ENERGY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds REGULATORY ASSISTANCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds URBAN SUSTAINABILITY DIRECTORS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINING WAY ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds WESTSIDE HOUSING ORGANIZATION INC ↗
- Who funds RIVER NETWORK ↗
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: United States Energy Foundation · Windward Fund · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · New Venture Fund · The Kresge Foundation · Solutions Project Inc · Water Foundation · Enterprise Community Partners Inc · The Energy Foundation · Freedom Together Foundation · The Cynthia & George Mitchell Foundation · Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated
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 Sustainable Communities 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.
- POWER52 Inc — 100% of income from government
- Living Classrooms Foundation — 7% of income from government
- Greenroots Inc — 1% 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.