· Private foundation
Mentors
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k36 grants · $174k
- $10k–50k30 grants · $458k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SURF AND TURF THERAPY | $35,000 |
| ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS AT HOME | $25,000 |
| GREEN OUR PLANET | $20,000 |
| DRESS FOR SUCCESS | $20,000 |
| CHILDREN'S CABINET | $20,000 |
| INNER CITY ARTS | $20,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $20,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI | $19,721 |
| EUROPEA UNIVERSIDAD | $16,940 |
| ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY | $16,813 |
| SHIPPENSBURG UNIVERSITY | $16,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,225 |
| UNITED ACTION FOR CHILDREN | $15,000 |
| SLIPPERY ROCK UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| THE SEWING LABS | $15,000 |
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 US giving — 88% of grant dollars ($2.8M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 12% that went abroad ($371k) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY25–25, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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
Beyond the US — 12% of all-years giving ($371k)
9 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of Mentors’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 +33% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
52 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 40 since wound down; 38 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, 35% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $398k 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
- CHCAPITAL HUMANE SOCIETY5× · 2020–2025 · $102k · revenue +115%
- IAINNER-CITY ARTS5× · 2020–2025 · $92k · revenue +44%
- DCDEBATE-KANSAS CITY5× · 2017–2025 · $87k · revenue +16%
Funded once
- SKSTRATEGIC KIDS FUNDone grant, 2021 · $36k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $28k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $27k
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.
Lewis & clark is a premier private higher education institution offering an exceptional education in an inclusive environment. by fostering critical thinking, innovation, creativity, civic engagement, and leadership, both inside and…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
Texas christian university is an institution of higher education which includes nine major academic units: liberal arts, science and engineering, business, education, fine arts, communication, honors, nursing and health sciences, and the…
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Arcadia university's pioneering, global, integrated, liberal arts, and professional learning experience cultivates leaders who are intellectually fearless and uniquely prepared for life and work. our highly regarded, values-based learning…
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
We educate women to lead and influence. we educate at all degree levels through valuing and integrating the liberal arts and professional education within the catholic intellectual tradition, see schedule oemphasizing scholarly inquiry and…
Endicott college offers students a vibrant academic environment that remains true to its founding principle of integrating professional and liberal arts with experiential learning. for more information see schedule o.
The mission of the university is to educate leaders for a global society who are strong in character and judgment, confident in their identity and vocation, and committed to service and justice.
The university of denver (du) is a higher educational institution, providing both undergraduate and graduate degrees - the mission of the university of denver is to promote learning by engaging with students (continued on schedule o)in…
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Oklahoma City University and the most unlike its peers is Opportunity Alliance Nevada. 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 41 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
37 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. 37 of the 199 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 CAPITAL HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds INNER-CITY ARTS ↗
- Who funds DEBATE-KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds ECHO COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds GREEN OUR PLANET ↗
- Who funds Surf and Turf Therapy ↗
- Who funds THE SEWING LABS ↗
- Who funds The One Thread Project Inc ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY ALLIANCE NEVADA ↗
- Who funds Malembe Rise Inc ↗
- Who funds FRANCISCAN UNIVERSITY OF STEUBENVILLE ↗
- Who funds ARTS WITH OTHERS ↗
- Who funds CULTIVATING CODERS INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S CABINET INC ↗
- Who funds OKLAHOMA CITY UNIVERSITY ↗
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: Greater Kansas City Community Foundation · Ibm International Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn 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 Mentors 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Berklee College of Music Inc — 1% of income from government
- Barry University Inc — 1% 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.