· Private foundation
Lawrence E & Elaine Smith Irell 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $19k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $85k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $120k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS | $120,000 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE | $15,000 |
| SALK INSTTUTE FOR BIOLOGICAL STUDIES | $15,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS USA | $15,000 |
| LOS ANGELES INNOCENCE PROJECT | $10,000 |
| CREATE CURES FOUNDATION | $7,000 |
| DEATH PENALTY FOCUS | $7,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOS ANGELES | $5,000 |
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 (FY18–18, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
16 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 1 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC8× · 2017–2024 · $965k · revenue +12%
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC6× · 2018–2024 · $99k · revenue +89%
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC3× · 2022–2024 · $90k · revenue +27%
Funded once
- EIEVOLUTION INSTITUTEone grant, 2019 · $36k
- AFANGIOGENESIS FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $30k · revenue +383%
- CQCREATIVE QUEST FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $12k
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.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Ilsi is a global, nonprofit federation dedicated to generating and advancing emerging science and groundbreaking research to ensure foods are safe, nutritious and sustainable, and that they improve planetary and human health and well-being…
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…
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.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
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.
To investigate, research, write, publish, present conferences and teach with respect to global, regional, transboundary, and comparative environmental issues and to make the findings from such activities available to the general public; to…
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…
We generate ideas, produce evidence, and design solutions to improve the lives of underserved populations around the world. we take a multidisciplinary, intergenerational, life-cycle approach that contributes to (see schedule o)four global…
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Center for Science in the Public Interest and the most unlike its peers is Charity Global Inc. 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 38 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 32 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 THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds EVOLUTION INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds The Salk Institute for Biological Studies ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds ANGIOGENESIS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Los Angeles Innocence Project Inc ↗
- Who funds OXFAM-AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds CREATE CURES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DEATH PENALTY FOCUS ↗
- Who funds Electronic Frontier Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds American Bird Conservancy ↗
- Who funds WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds BAT CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds LA GOAL ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INDIAN COLLEGE FUND ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST ↗
- Who funds THE INNOCENCE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ANIMAL WELFARE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CHARITY GLOBAL INC ↗
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: 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 Lawrence E & Elaine Smith Irell 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.
- Oxfam-America Inc — 0% 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.