· Private foundation
Mathew & Josephine Birnbaum Foundation
Its FY2019 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 FY2017–2019.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GIVE WELL | $7,600 |
| BLYTHEDALE CHILDRENS HOSPITAL | $5,000 |
| FAYUN MONASTERY | $1,500 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK | $1,250 |
| HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | $1,000 |
| SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER | $1,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF SANTA CRUZ | $1,000 |
| HOMELESS GARDEN PROJECT | $1,000 |
| LIVE EARTH FARM DISCOVERY PROJECT | $750 |
| PAJARO VALLEY LOAVES AND FISHES | $500 |
| SANGHAPALA FOUNDATIONABHAYAGIRI MONASTERY | $500 |
| METTA FOREST MONASTERY | $500 |
| INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN UNDERSTANDING | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR CANCER RESEARCH | $250 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–19) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% of your 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.
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 +98% since the first grant, against +80% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2019, 3 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (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 FY2019, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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
- TCTHE CLEAR FUND3× · 2017–2019 · $22k · revenue +815%
- BCBLYTHEDALE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL2× · 2017–2019 · $16k · revenue +32%
- SPSOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC3× · 2017–2019 · $5k · revenue +10%
Funded once
- HMHOUSING MATTERSgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $1k · revenue +592%
- IRInternational Rescue Committee INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $1k · revenue +80%
- FFFORESTS FOREVER FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2017 · $500 · revenue -4%
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
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.
Nature and culture international conserves biologically diverse landscapes in latin america, in concert with local cultures, for the well-being of the planet.
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
The endowment works collaboratively with partners in the public and private sectors to advance systemic, transformative, and sustainable change for the health and vitality of the nation's working forests and forest reliant communities.
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…
The resource renewal institute facilitates the creation, development and implementation of practical strategies to solve the entire complex environmental problem by addressing it comprehensively.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Dedicated to protecting the world's natural environment on behalf of the public by serving as a public interest law firm. refer to schedule o, part iii, line 4a, for list of litigated cases or advocacy work.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Foundation Santa Cruz County and the most unlike its peers is International Rescue Committee 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 36 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 49 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 CLEAR FUND ↗
- Who funds BLYTHEDALE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SANGHAPALA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds LIVE EARTH FARM DISCOVERY PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds HOUSING MATTERS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds HOMELESS GARDEN PROJECT ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds BIRCHBARK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CUTLER MEMORIAL LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WINOOSKI RIVER INC ↗
- Who funds BARRE OPERA HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds FORESTS FOREVER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR CANCER RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds SHELBURNE MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds TWIN VALLEY SENIORS INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Earth Island Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds Vermont Public Radio ↗
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: Monterey Peninsula Foundation · Volunteer Centers of Santa Cruz County · Community Foundation Santa Cruz County · Newman's Own Foundation · The Vermont Community Foundation · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · Michael & Alice Chetkovich Foundation · American Gift Fund · Impactassetsinc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Endowment 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 Mathew & Josephine Birnbaum 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Vermont Foodbank — 13% of income from government
- Cutler Memorial Library — 12% of income from government
- Town Hall Theater Inc — 11% of income from government
- Shelburne Museum Inc — 9% of income from government
- Friends of the Winooski River Inc — 7% of income from government
- North Branch Nature Center Inc — 4% 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.
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How do I get to Mathew & Josephine Birnbaum Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Mathew & Josephine Birnbaum 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.