· Private foundation
Karsten Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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
- Under $10k5 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $188k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE | $20,000 |
| ROCK THE VOTE | $15,000 |
| PROJECT SHEMA | $15,000 |
| TIDES FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| DOWN HOME NORTH CAROLINA | $12,500 |
| FORWARD MONTANA FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| MONTANA WOMEN VOTE | $10,000 |
| HIAS | $10,000 |
| MI FAMILIA VOTA | $10,000 |
| PUBLIC WISE INC | $10,000 |
| VOTER PARTICIPATION PROJECT | $10,000 |
| T'RUAH | $10,000 |
| MICHIGAN VOICES | $10,000 |
| SPREAD THE VOTE | $10,000 |
| SOMOS SIEMBRA NC | $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 (FY17–24, $41k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of those 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 100% of Karsten Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 16% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 0% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +30% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
28 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 21 since wound down; 13 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, 43% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $107k 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
WILLIAM J BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $135k · revenue +206%- EIENVIRONMENTAL INTEGRITY PROJECT6× · 2018–2023 · $82k · revenue +87%
- JSJ STREET EDUCATION FUND INC5× · 2019–2023 · $65k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- JNJEWISH NATIONAL FUNDone grant, 2023 · $15k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $13k
- CSCALIFORNIA SCIENCE CENTER FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $13k · revenue +14%
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.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
To lead and coordinate the global initiative to address and prevent criminalization, violence, and impunity against indigenous peoples towards strengthening their collectives, solidarity, and actions.
To drive transformational adaptation to protect communities across the country from higher seas, stronger storms, and more frequent flooding.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
Women donors network advances a just, equitable, and sustainable world through the power of philanthropy, women's leadership, and collective and individual action.
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…
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
Ultraviolet education fund (uvef) is a 501c3 organization. ultraviolet is the premier national organization advocating for gender justice issues using creative, strategic campaigning and digital-first organizing. ultraviolet drives…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
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 The Retina Vitreous Foundation. 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 25 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
68 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. 68 of the 99 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 WILLIAM J BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL INTEGRITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds J STREET EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ROCK THE VOTE ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC WISE INC ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds Equality Now Inc ↗
- Who funds VOTER PARTICIPATION PROJECT EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds T'RUAH ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds KIND INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA SCIENCE CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE VOTER PARTICIPATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds DOWN HOME NC ↗
- Who funds ASYLUM SEEKER ADVOCACY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SOMOS SIEMBRA ↗
- Who funds SPREAD THE VOTE INC ↗
- Who funds MI FAMILIA VOTA ↗
- Who funds Democracy North Carolina ↗
- Who funds REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM FOR ALL ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN VOICES ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF UNITED HATZALAH INC ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD CREDIT UNION COMMUNITY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds FORWARD MT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds INDIVISIBLE CIVICS ↗
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: Impactassetsinc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Tides Foundation · NEO Philanthropy Inc · New Venture Fund · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Marty and Dorothy Silverman Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · Hopewell Fund · The Ford Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund
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 Karsten Family 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% 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 Karsten Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Karsten Family 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.