· Private foundation
Mary Jane Wahl Gearns Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $346k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $424k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CORNELL UNIVERSITY | $189,000 |
| LOWCOUNTRY FOOD BANK | $75,000 |
| LEGAL MOMENTUM | $60,000 |
| THE INTERFAITH NUTRITION NETWORK | $50,000 |
| CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES | $50,000 |
| BOTH ENDS BELIEVING | $32,500 |
| CHANCES FOR CHILDREN | $32,500 |
| CARNEGIE HALL | $25,000 |
| RETHINKNYC | $25,000 |
| COASTAL CONSERVATION LEAGUE | $25,000 |
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $25,000 |
| WATER MISSION | $25,000 |
| THE SHARING FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $25,000 |
| AMERICARES | $25,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $442k) land where the poverty rate runs at 5%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 5% of Mary Jane Wahl Gearns 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.
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 +47% since the first grant, against -39% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $75k 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
Cornell University6× · 2020–2025 · $588k · revenue +46%- TITHE INTERFAITH NUTRITION NETWORK INC6× · 2020–2025 · $300k · revenue +79%
- LMLEGAL MOMENTUM6× · 2020–2025 · $253k · revenue +47%
Funded once
- PCPONDEROSA CENTERone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue -39%
- NTNYRR TEAM FOR KIDSone grant, 2023 · $4k
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.
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…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
Water.org's goal is to bring safe water and sanitation to the world through access to small, affordable loans.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
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.
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…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
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.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis.
Our mission is to invest in and accelerate the development of the most promising future leaders in biomedical research with global impact.
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,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Both Ends Believing Inc and the most unlike its peers is Ponderosa Center. 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 34 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 35 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 Cornell University ↗
- Who funds THE INTERFAITH NUTRITION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL MOMENTUM ↗
- Who funds CHANCES FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds BOTH ENDS BELIEVING INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICARES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE SHARING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WATER MISSIONS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds THE CARNEGIE HALL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds New Ground Inc ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Buckminster Fuller Institute ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds ISLAND HARVEST LTD ↗
- Who funds HOPE FOR UKRAINE INC ↗
- Who funds LOWCOUNTRY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds THE ARTS CAMPUS AT WILLITS ↗
- Who funds RETHINKNYC INC ↗
- Who funds ROARING FORK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Mountain Rescue Aspen Inc ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds THE VOTER PARTICIPATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds DRAVET SYNDROME FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL JAZZ MUSEUM IN HARLEM ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds PONDEROSA CENTER ↗
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: Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift 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 Mary Jane Wahl Gearns 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.
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- Americares Foundation 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.