· Public charity
Lava Mae
Lava Mae is a nonprofit that teaches people around the world to bring mobile showers and other services that promote well-being to people experiencing homelessness.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Cloud Covered Streets | $20,000 |
| Shower Power Inc | $10,000 |
| WAVE Project | $10,000 |
| Merrimack Valley Dream Center | $10,000 |
| Restoration Community Develop | $10,000 |
| ShowerUP | $10,000 |
| SHARE Community | $10,000 |
| Lighter Loads ATX | $10,000 |
| Streetside Showers | $10,000 |
| Hearts of Rescue | $10,000 |
| Humanity ShowersApostolic As | $10,000 |
| Street Angels Inc | $10,000 |
| Showering Love Inc | $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 (FY19–22, $265k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 68% 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.
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 +275% since the first grant, against +144% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2022, 2 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (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 FY2022, 43% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $80k 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
- SLSHOWERING LOVE INC4× · 2019–2022 · $40k · revenue +817%
- LLLIGHTER LOADS ATX3× · 2019–2022 · $35k · revenue +53%
- BBBROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE2× · 2019–2021 · $26k · revenue +4%
Funded once
- UAURBAN ALCHEMYgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +901%
- LTLA Trailer #2one grant, 2019 · $24k
- HOHOUSE OF HOPE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $15k · revenue +221%
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.
Covid-19
Bridge of Light, provides critical support through various services, including free hot showers, laundry services, haircuts, and the distribution of underwear and clothing. The primary problem we are addressing is the lack of access to…
Providing essentials for the homeless
housing and feeding the homeless
Homeless services
To provide the homeless and those at-risk for homelessness with services, resources and referrals to assist them to regain independence with dignity.
Helping the unhoused maintain their dignity by providing a means for personal hygiene so they may focus on a fresh start
Housing the homeless
Homeless Shelter
Teaching & defending rights of homeless
Homeless
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Street Angels Inc and the most unlike its peers is House of Hope. 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 10 years old; the field is 16. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 11% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 29 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 URBAN ALCHEMY ↗
- Who funds SHOWERING LOVE INC ↗
- Who funds LIGHTER LOADS ATX ↗
- Who funds BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE ↗
- Who funds STREETSIDE SHOWERS INC ↗
- Who funds SHOWER POWER INC ↗
- Who funds Share Community ↗
- Who funds CLOUD COVERED STREETS ↗
- Who funds WAVE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Support the Soupman Corp ↗
- Who funds HOUSE OF HOPE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds RED FEATHER DEVELOPMENT GROUP ↗
- Who funds MOVING WATERS ↗
- Who funds PROJECT REFRESH INC ↗
- Who funds STREET ANGELS INC ↗
- Who funds SKID ROW HOUSING TRUST ↗
- Who funds MERRIMACK VALLEY DREAM CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Shower Up ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITIES FOR HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSE OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds LOW INCOME HOUSING INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds DIGNITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Restoration Community Development Corporation ↗
- Who funds YOUTHLINK ↗
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: Morgan Stanley Foundation Inc · California Community Foundation · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Local Initiatives Support Corporation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · American Endowment Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc
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 Lava Mae 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.
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 Lava Mae?
Find your warmest path to Lava Mae 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.