· Private foundation
John Brown Cook Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $50k–250k9 grants · $1.1M
- $250k+5 grants · $1.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRIENDS OF THE GARVAN INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH | $475,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION | $450,000 |
| MOVING PICTURE INSTITUTE | $325,000 |
| ACCURACY IN MEDIA | $275,000 |
| EPIDEMIC ANSWERS | $250,000 |
| EMERGENT ORDER FOUNDATION INC | $225,000 |
| INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE | $200,000 |
| GLOBAL PEHT | $200,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF AUSTIN - UATX | $150,000 |
| HAND TO HEART PROJECT | $125,000 |
| CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE INSTITUTE | $100,000 |
| THE FAIRNESS CENTER | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| AMERICA'S FUTURE | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 57% 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
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 +14% since the first grant, against -100% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 3 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $250k 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
- IFINSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE5× · 2020–2024 · $1.9M · revenue +57%
- MPMOVING PICTURE INSTITUTE5× · 2020–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +1%
- FFFOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC4× · 2021–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +149%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $50k
OPENCOLLECTIVE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue -100%- IDINCUBATE DEBATEone grant, 2023 · $10k
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.
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
The american enterprise institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. aei pursues these ideals through independent thinking and the…
First Look Institute supports fearless investigative journalism, innovative and cinematic nonfiction filmmaking, and press freedom initiatives to protect the right to a free and open society and press.
Allbritton journalism institute aims to train a new generation of non-partisan political reporters from diverse backgrounds to produce high-quality, fact-based journalism.
Pro publica is an independent, non-profit, pulitzer prize-winning newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories. [see continuation on schedule o] we produce…
To provide accurate, objective information and analysis on international strategic issues for legislators, diplomats, foreign affairs analysts, international business leaders, economists, the military, defense commentators, journalists,…
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
The peterson institute for international economics (piie) is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening prosperity and human welfare in the global economy through expert analysis and practical…
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
The Knight First Amendment Institute defends the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, public advocacy and public education. Our aim is to promote a system of free expression that is…
The institute's mission, as set out in its certificate of incorporation, is to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to…
The manhattan institute is a community of scholars, journalists, activists, and civic leaders dedicated to advancing opportunity, individual liberty, and the rule of law in america and its great cities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Moving Picture Institute and the most unlike its peers is Teachers College Columbia University. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 23 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 INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds MOVING PICTURE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND EXPRESSION INC ↗
- Who funds ACCURACY IN MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds VENTURE FOR AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds Documenting Hope Inc ↗
- Who funds Emergent Order Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds PROJECT VERITAS ↗
- Who funds Teachers College Columbia University ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL PEHT CORP PARTNERSHIP TO END HUMAN TRAFFICKING ↗
- Who funds UATX ↗
- Who funds CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds PRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENCE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE FAIRNESS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds America's Future Foundation ↗
- Who funds OPENCOLLECTIVE FOUNDATION ↗
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: Donors Trust Inc · Adolph Coors Foundation · The Dunn Foundation · The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Inc · Bradley Impact Fund Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 John Brown Cook Foundation 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.
- Global Peht Corp Partnership to End Human Trafficking — 52% 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 John Brown Cook Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John Brown Cook 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.