· Public charity
National Marine Sanctuary Foundation
The NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY FOUNDATION is a leading voice for u.s.
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 61 grants below total $5,641,465 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $6,014,467 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $373,002 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 $10k13 grants · $94k
- $10k–50k22 grants · $558k
- $50k–250k20 grants · $2.5M
- $250k+6 grants · $2.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MOTE MARINE LABORATORY | $719,437 |
| MISSISSIPPI AQUARIUM | $507,498 |
| LEHIGH UNIVERSITY | $440,544 |
| UNIVERSITY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS | $275,125 |
| TEMPLE UNIVERSITY | $274,005 |
| THE FLORIDA AQUARIUM INC | $264,000 |
| GULF OF MAINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE | $242,752 |
| AUDUBON NATURE INSTITUTE | $232,000 |
| MOODY GARDENS | $200,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF GUAM MARINE LABORATORY | $185,494 |
| HI DEPARTMENT OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES | $183,604 |
| JOHNSTON APPLIED MARINE SCIENCE | $154,262 |
| UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII | $146,149 |
| UNIVERSITY CORPORATION AT MONTEREY BAY | $141,693 |
| SUSTAINABLE OCEANS & REEFS | $132,708 |
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 (FY17–24, $468k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 42% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 11% of National Marine Sanctuary 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 +45% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.
75 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2024, 46 since wound down; 31 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, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.1M 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
MOTE MARINE LABORATORY INC4× · 2021–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +82%- TCTHE CORAL RESTORATION FOUNDATION INC4× · 2021–2024 · $2.1M · revenue +31%
- GOGULF OF MAINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE8× · 2017–2024 · $2.1M · revenue +102%
Funded once
- GCGUAM CORAL REEF INITIATIVEone grant, 2023 · $226k
- COCity of Key Westone grant, 2017 · $220k
- COCOMMONWEALTH OF NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDSone grant, 2023 · $191k
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.
Protecting and promoting the marine biodiversity of Hawai'i through coral restoration, ecological monitoring, regenerative tourism, and cultural integration
The organization's mission is to promote respect and appreciation for Puget Sound by teaching principles of environmental stewardship and inspire observation of and involvement with Puget Sound. Through its Marine Science Afloat program,…
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…
To inspire lifelong environmental stewardship and to ensure the survival of coral reefs and sea turtles in hawaii through science-based conservation efforts, education and outreach.
Save threatened marine life using pioneering research, education, and sustainable conservation solutions
Marine conservation institute is dedicated to securing permanent, strong protection for the oceans' most important places for us and future generations.
The northeastern regional association of coastal and ocean observing systems' (neracoos) mission is to produce, integrate and communicate high- quality information that helps ensure safety, economic and environmental resilience, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Save the Bay Inc and the most unlike its peers is Moody Gardens 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 31 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
146 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 146 of the 220 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 MOTE MARINE LABORATORY INC ↗
- Who funds THE CORAL RESTORATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GULF OF MAINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds OCEAN EXPLORATION TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI AQUARIUM ↗
- Who funds LEHIGH UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Temple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education ↗
- Who funds KAKOO OIWI ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF THE VIRGIN ISLANDS ↗
- Who funds Audubon Nature Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds REEF RENEWAL USA INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds MOODY GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds Seafood Nutrition Partnership ↗
- Who funds WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Ocean Foundation ↗
- Who funds The Florida Aquarium Inc ↗
- Who funds The Pew Charitable Trusts ↗
- Who funds SEA RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PAEPAE O HE'EIA ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COASTAL STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARK TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds KEAUKAHA PANAEWA COMMUNITY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds SECORE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL FOR NATIVE HAWAIIAN ADVANCEMENT ↗
- Who funds PHILLIP AND PATRICIA FROST MUSEUM OF SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY CORPORATION AT MONTEREY BAY ↗
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: National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · The Nature Conservancy · The Schmidt Family Foundation · Resources Legacy Fund · Patagoniaorg · American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums Inc · The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment Inc · Trustees of the Estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop Dba Kamehameha Schools · North American Association for Environmental Educa · Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement · University of Miami · Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida I
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 Marine Sanctuary 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.
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — 63% of income from government
- National Park Trust Inc — 51% of income from government
- Edadvance — 41% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- University of Delaware — 30% of income from government
- Chesapeake Conservancy Inc — 27% of income from government
- Center for Coastal Studies Inc — 26% of income from government
- Salem Sound 2000 Inc — 20% of income from government
- Mystic River Watershed Association Inc — 18% of income from government
- The Coral Restoration Foundation Inc — 16% of income from government
- New England Aquarium Corporation — 12% of income from government
- Sea Research Foundation Inc — 8% of income from government
- Living Classrooms Foundation — 7% of income from government
- Ocean Exploration Trust Inc — 5% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Solve — 5% of income from government
- Oregon Museum of Science and Industry — 4% of income from government
- Mote Marine Laboratory Inc — 4% of income from government
- Whale and Dolphin Conservationinc — 3% of income from government
- Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Marion Institute Inc — 1% of income from government
- National Aquarium Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Florida Aquarium 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.