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International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics

The foundation promotes human betterment through experimental economics to improve the understanding of exchange systems.* ifree funds primary research in market and personal exchange systems* ifree sponsors participatory, hands-on, educational workshops, interdisciplinary academic discussions, and outreach programs for those outside the…

$288k
Granted FY2020
6
Grants FY2020
6
States reached
$69k
Largest
01What you fundRead
02The needRead
03Your edgeRead
04Your fieldRead
05Through PlinthRead

Read this first · the figures below need context

83% of International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics’s FY2021 grant dollars went to The Alaska Community Foundation, not to grantees.

Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2021 names 5 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2020, the last year International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics named its own grantees at scale: 6 organizations, $151k. It is dated, not current.

Organizations named directly on the return

12
’17
9
’18
10
’19
6
’20
5
’21

Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.

01What you fund
0174% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2021.

Education$461kPhilanthropy$310kSocial Science$183kCommunity Improvement$10kOther$339k
02FY2020 · 6 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

The 6 grants below total $151,020 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $288,312 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $137,292 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 · FY2020

  • Under $10k3 grants · $21k
  • $10k–50k2 grants · $61k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $69k
$11,000
Median grant
6
States reached
$0
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY$69,466
MERCATUS CENTER INC$49,500
UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATION$11,000
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY$9,600
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH$6,240
THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE$5,214
02The need
03

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:

Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–21) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 53% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.

area typical 10%UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH: $10k → 11%REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE: $10k → 10%REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA: $10k → 13%REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS CAMPUS: $10k → 16%UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII: $10k → 9%TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK: $8k → 17%RICE UNIVERSITY: $36k → 16%FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FOUNDATION: $10k → 19%BIRMINGHAM-SOUTHERN COLLEGE: $10k → 16%BOARD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA: $82k → 17%REGENTS UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: $10k → 10%BROWN UNIVERSITY: $10k → 14%TRUSTEES OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY: $7k → 19%OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY: $10k → 15%UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATION: $33k → 8%ALASKA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION: $310k → 22%UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: $10k → 14%MERCATUS CENTER INC: $52k → 7%RECTOR AND VISITORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: $10k → 8%PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE: $10k → 9%UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK: $10k → 11%UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH: $6k → 11%REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE: $3k → 10%UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ: $10k → 13%BOARD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA: $77k → 17%REGENTS UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: $10k → 10%PURDUE UNIVERSITY: $14k → 19%UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATION: $27k → 8%MERCATUS CENTER INC: $50k → 7%PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE: $10k → 9%CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY: $69k → 10%UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA: $13k → 17%UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATION: $11k → 8%MERCATUS CENTER INC: $45k → 7%CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY: $60k → 10%UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATION: $10k → 8%MERCATUS CENTER INC: $36k → 7%CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY: $43k → 10%CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY: $36k → 10%CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY: $27k → 10%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

AK
VT
IL
WI
NY
IN
OH
PA
RI
CA
VA
MD
TN
HI
AL
TX
FL

Grants abroad, by region — $34k on the FY2021 return

Schedule F, as filed: 2 regions. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.

South America$18k · 54% · 1 grant

Stated purpose: ECONOMICS EDUCATION

Europe (including Iceland and Greenland)$15k · 46% · 2 grants

Stated purpose: ECONOMICS RESEARCH

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

83%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$802k · 11 repeat orgs$165k to everyone else

11 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2020, 7 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (too recent to call). Read against FY2020, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

11
8

Total granted

$802k
$131k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+47%
+56%

Still filing today

45%
63%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2021, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’19’20’21
EducationSocial ScienceOther

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

  • CU
    CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY
    5× · 2017–2021 · $236k · revenue +62%
  • MC
    Mercatus Center Inc
    4× · 2017–2020 · $183k · revenue +63%
  • UO
    UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATION
    4× · 2017–2020 · $81k · revenue +17%

Funded once

  • WM
    William Marsh Rice Universitygraduated
    one grant, 2017 · $36k · revenue +104%
  • Southern Methodist Universitygraduated
    one grant, 2017 · $35k · revenue +57%
  • UO
    UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII SYSTEM
    one grant, 2018 · $10k

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

04Your 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
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
2
President and Fellows of Harvard College

Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.

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
Trustees of Tufts College

Education and Research

Education
5
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.

Education
6
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
7
Vanderbilt University

See Disclosure Above.

Education
8
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
9
Furman University

The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.

Education
10
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
11
Trinity University

Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.

Education
12
University of Miami

See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Pittsburgh and the most unlike its peers is William Marsh Rice University. 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 65 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

THE FIELDby orgYOUR GRANTEESby number22%0%<5yr14%5%5–10yr19%10%10–20yr16%10%20–35yr13%15%35–55yr16%60%55yr+
THE FIELDby orgYOUR MONEYby value22%0%<5yr14%1%5–10yr19%3%10–20yr16%27%20–35yr13%23%35–55yr16%47%55yr+

The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund
0.0%0/28
the rest of the field
13%
240,396/1,819,537

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.

04the grantee network

15 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. 15 of the 26 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
15/15
Grantees still filing
12/15
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY — $236,049 · EducationCHAPMAN UNIVERSITYUNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATION — $80,605 · EducationUNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATIONWilliam Marsh Rice University — $36,000 · EducationWilliam Marsh Rice UniversitySouthern Methodist University — $35,000 · EducationSouthern Methodist UniversityPresident and Fellows of Middlebury College — $19,869 · EducationUNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH — $16,240 · Education+4 more — $37,100 · Education+4 moreBOARD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA — $172,453 · OtherBOARD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF A…TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY — $27,500 · OtherTEXAS A&M UNIVERSITYTRUSTEES OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY — $21,025 · OtherTRUSTEES OF PURDUE UNIVERSIT…REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA — $20,000 · OtherREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF…REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE — $12,977 · OtherUniversity of Wisconsin Madison — $12,587 · Other+7 more — $64,624 · Other+7 moreThe Alaska Community Foundation — $310,000 · PhilanthropyThe Alaska Community Founda…Mercatus Center Inc — $182,500 · Social ScienceMercatus Center…BROWN UNIVERSITY — $9,960 · Community Improvement
Education$460,863Other$331,166Philanthropy$310,000Social Science$182,500Community Improvement$9,960

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

25%50%75%100%$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetThe Alaska Community Foundation — $310,000 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetCHAPMAN UNIVERSITY — $236,049 over 5y, 0.0% of budgetMercatus Center Inc — $182,500 over 4y, 0.2% of budgetUNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FOUNDATION — $80,605 over 4y, 0.1% of budgetWilliam Marsh Rice University — $36,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetSouthern Methodist University — $35,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetPresident and Fellows of Middlebury College — $19,869 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetUNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH — $16,240 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetBIRMINGHAM-SOUTHERN COLLEGE — $10,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetFLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC — $10,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetBROWN UNIVERSITY — $9,960 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetUniversity of Chicago — $9,900 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetThe Research Foundation for The State University of New York — $9,600 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetTHE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK — $7,600 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetUNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE RESEARCH FOUNDATION — $5,214 over 1y, 0.1% 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.

Government reliance of your grantees

Every dot is one organization International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics 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.

2025
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 10%0%1%3%5%your share of their income ↑0%13%25%38%50%share of the org’s income from government →median 0%
  • President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 0% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
1get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–50%
typical government reliance, FY20–25

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics?

Find your warmest path to International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics 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 26 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 2020, released 2020. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

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 camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines