· Public charity
National Geographic Society
To increase and diffuse geographic knowledge in the broadest sense, using the power of science, exploration, education and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of the world.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 74 grants below total $8,865,814 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $31,410,378 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $22,544,564 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k29 grants · $737k
- $50k–250k32 grants · $3.3M
- $250k+11 grants · $4.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Wildpath LLC | $1,250,000 |
| Regents Of The University Of California | $576,409 |
| Blue Grass Community Foundation | $444,427 |
| Great Plains Conservation Foundation | $400,000 |
| State of Hawaii DLNR | $350,000 |
| The Peregrine Fund Inc | $349,047 |
| The Regents Of The University Of California Davis | $348,780 |
| Conservation Through Public Health | $342,454 |
| Oregon State University | $279,443 |
| Archaeology in the Community | $256,270 |
| Project Ceti | $250,000 |
| Zambian Carnivore Programme | $225,000 |
| ReWild | $200,000 |
| University of Hawaii | $190,035 |
| University of Hawaii Foundation | $157,902 |
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 (FY19–21, $233k) 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
Grants abroad, by region — $18M on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 9 regions, $13M to organizations and $5.0M to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: Buffett Award · Explorers At Large Grant · Okavango Wilderness Project
Stated purpose: Education Grant · Meridian Grant · Ocean Conservation
Stated purpose: Education Grant · Meridian Grant · Ocean Conservation
Stated purpose: Ocean Conservation · Research Grant · Wayfinder Award
Stated purpose: Education Grant · Meridian Grant · Storytelling Grant
Stated purpose: Research Grant · Storytelling Grant · The Climate Pledge
Stated purpose: Education Grant · Research Grant · Ocean Conservation
Stated purpose: Wayfinder Awards
Stated purpose: Young Explorers
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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 +40% since the first grant, against +36% for the ones you funded once.
154 repeat relationships — 45 still active in FY2024, 109 since wound down; 24 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, 62% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.2M 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
REWILD3× · 2018–2020 · $1.2M · revenue +236%- TPTHE PEREGRINE FUND INC5× · 2017–2024 · $882k · revenue +122%
- CTCONSERVATION THROUGH PUBLIC HEALTH3× · 2022–2024 · $785k · revenue +86% · 28% of their budget
Funded once
- TWTwo Wolves Films LLCone grant, 2023 · $565k
The University of Tulsaone grant, 2022 · $390k · revenue -2%- LFLooking For Satyrus LLCone grant, 2023 · $379k
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.
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
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 purpose of rainforest foundation us is to support indigenous peoples and forest communities in their efforts to secure their lands, protect their environment, and uphold their rights.
The wildlife society's mission is to inspire, empower, and enable wildlife professionals to sustain wildlife populations and habitats through science-based management and conservation.
Increase societal understanding of the earth system through scientific research and education.
The american geosciences institute (agi) was founded in 1948, under a directive of the national academy of sciences, as a network of associations representing geoscientists with a diverse array of skills and knowledge of our planet. the…
Nature and culture international conserves biologically diverse landscapes in latin america, in concert with local cultures, for the well-being of the planet.
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The institute is dedicated to scientific research, the results of which are used to promote public awareness and education in the areas of conservation biology and ecology,including the wise use of natural resources.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Khaled Bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation. 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.6% 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.
343 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. 343 of the 528 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 RESOURCES LEGACY FUND ↗
- Who funds REWILD ↗
- Who funds THE PEREGRINE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds BLUE GRASS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION THROUGH PUBLIC HEALTH ↗
- Who funds WILDAID INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds ZAMBIA CARNIVORE PROGRAMME ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds GREAT PLAINS CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN PEOPLE & WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds PROJECT CETI INC ↗
- Who funds ISLAND CONSERVATION ↗
- Who funds The University of Tulsa ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds The Inst for Regional Conservation ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Dartmouth College ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL SNOW LEOPARD TRUST ↗
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: American Chemical Society · National Collegiate Athletic Association · Folds of Honor Foundation · National Writing Project Corporation · American Council of Learned Societies · The Nature Conservancy · The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York · The Pew Charitable Trusts · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance Inc · Conservation Food and Health Foundation Inc C/O Gma Foundations · Gordon E and Betty I Moore 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 National Geographic Society 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.
- African Aquatic Conservation Fund Inc — 55% of income from government
- Ramsey Research Foundation Inc — 37% of income from government
- The Inst for Regional Conservation — 35% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- African People & Wildlife Fund Inc — 32% of income from government
- Centre for Wildlife Studies Inc — 20% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Yale University — 12% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Florida Institute of Technology Inc — 5% of income from government
- Ocean Exploration Trust Inc — 5% of income from government
- The University of Tulsa — 5% of income from government
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% 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.