· Public charity
Leveling the Playing Field Inc
Leveling the playing field gives underprivileged children the opportunity to enjoy the mental and physical benefits of youth sports participation.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2018.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 38 grants below total $521,368 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $951,336 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $429,968 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 · FY2018
- Under $10k23 grants · $174k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $270k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $76k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| $76,495 | |
| IMPACT SILVER SPRING | $40,154 |
| REUNION SPORTIVE D'HAITI INC | $39,158 |
| PAPA'S LAND FAMILY EDUCATIONAL ADVA | $25,560 |
| PAPADIA UNITED SOCCER ROOTS USA | $25,198 |
| ANACOSTIA AMP OUTREACH EMPOWERMENT | $16,846 |
| Individual grant recipient | $16,314 |
| DREAM SPORTS AFRICA | $16,278 |
| ROCKY POINT YOUTH RECREATION | $14,716 |
| BESTER COMMUNITY OF HOPE | $14,559 |
| NORTHWOOD BASEBALL LEAGUE INC | $14,406 |
| THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR CHILDREN AN | $13,096 |
| FUNDACION LOS NINOS DE MARIA INC | $12,115 |
| WOLVES LACROSSE CLUB INC | $11,526 |
| THE BALTIMORE CRIMSON TIDE INC | $10,519 |
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 (FY17–17, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +46% since the first grant, against +37% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2018, 0 since wound down; 28 grantees were first funded in FY2018 (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 FY2018, 43% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $299k 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
- FFACEBOOK3× · 2017–2019 · $124k
- ISIMPACT SILVER SPRING8× · 2017–2024 · $70k · revenue +14%
- RSReunion Sportive d'Haiti Inc4× · 2017–2022 · $65k · revenue +46% · 37% of their budget
Funded once
- HBHOCKEY BEYOND BOUNDARIES INTERNATIOone grant, 2017 · $61k
- DBDEEN BALL SPORTS INCORPORATEDone grant, 2017 · $25k
- EWExcelsior Wellnessgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $17k · revenue +113%
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.
Baltimore Sports Academy serves under resourced communities by providing elementary-aged youth access to summer camps, after school programs, and sports leagues to develop strong bodies, minds and spirits. We assist youth to have success…
To inspire and enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens
Develop and promote the growth of and an appreciation for the game of soccer.
Youth sports - physical education & skills development
To implant firmly in the youth of the community by providing supervised athletic events, the ideals of good sportsmanship, honesty, loyalty, courage and respect so that they may become well adjusted, stronger and happier and will grow to…
Youth Sports activities
Youth development
DC Scores goes where kids in need are and creates neighborhood teams that give kids the confidence and skills to succeed on the playing field, in the classroom, and in life.
Youth academic and physical health devel
The Academy is a pre-kindergarten through grade eight independent school preparing girls and boys in the metropolitan Washington, DC area for competitive secondary schools. The Academy is a diverse independent day school committed to…
Youth Baseball league
To provide youth with sports, educational and civic direction helping them build the character and self-esteem they need to reach their full potential and value in society.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Amandla Inc and the most unlike its peers is Golf My Future Mygame. 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 12 years old; the field is 14. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 19% of your grantees by number, and just 12% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 7% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
102 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.
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.
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: Good Sports Inc · Dick's Sporting Goods Foundation · Womens Sports Foundation · The Abell Foundation Inc · Fund for Educational Excellence Inc · Greater Washington Community Foundation · The United Way of Central Maryland Inc · West Baltimore Renaissance Foundation Inc · Family League of Baltimore City Inc · Clark Charitable Foundation Inc Dba a James & Alice B Clark Foundation · Baltimore Community Foundation Inc · 50can 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 Leveling the Playing Field Inc 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Young Men's Christian Association of Central Maryland Inc — 22% 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 Leveling the Playing Field Inc?
Find your warmest path to Leveling the Playing Field Inc 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.