· Public charity
Natural Resources Defense Council Inc
We safeguard the earth: its people, its plants and animals, and (see schedule o) the natural systems on which all life depends.
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.
The 116 grants below total $5,315,665 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $12,515,997 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $7,200,332 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $77k
- $10k–50k86 grants · $1.5M
- $50k–250k17 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+2 grants · $2.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NRDC ACTION FUND INC | $2,000,000 |
| COMING CLEAN INC | $400,000 |
| THE PARTNERSHIP PROJECT INC | $153,000 |
| DOGWOOD ALLIANCE | $151,400 |
| COMMUNITIES FOR A BETTER ENVIRONMENT | $100,000 |
| CENTER FOR EARTH ENERGY AND DEMOCRACY | $100,000 |
| WESTERN RESOURCE ADVOCATES | $80,000 |
| WINDWARD FUND | $75,000 |
| WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS | $75,000 |
| SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS | $69,300 |
| NW ENERGY COALITION | $62,500 |
| THE INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR DIALOGUE AND PEACEBUILDING | $60,000 |
| SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER | $60,000 |
| UNITED TRIBES OF BRISTOL BAY | $60,000 |
| CENTRAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $58,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 94% 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 — $7.2M on the FY2025 return
Schedule F, as filed: 6 regions. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: CLEAN ENERGY ADVOCACY
Stated purpose: CLEAN ENERGY ADVOCACY
Stated purpose: BIOGEMS ADVOCACY
Stated purpose: CLEAN ENERGY ADVOCACY
Stated purpose: BIOGEMS ADVOCACY · CLEAN ENERGY ADVOCACY
Stated purpose: CLEAN ENERGY ADVOCACY
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 +41% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
231 repeat relationships — 67 still active in FY2025, 164 since wound down; 46 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $906k 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
- NANRDC ACTION FUND INC8× · 2018–2025 · $8.8M · revenue +82%
The Partnership Project Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $6.5M · revenue +35%- SASOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC9× · 2017–2025 · $3.4M · revenue +490%
Funded once
- SPSolutions Project Incone grant, 2023 · $500k · revenue -54%
- PFPARTNERSHIP FOR SOUTHERN EQUITYone grant, 2022 · $500k · revenue -58%
- PPPEORIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS DISTRICT 150one grant, 2020 · $469k
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.
Our mission is to fight against fossil fuel executives and industries that have turned our communities into dumping grounds for toxic waste, poisoning our air, water, lan, and bodies. We organize to oppose giant oil refineries, dirty…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
In service to communities, the earth and future generations, the science and environmental health network forges science, ethics, and law into tools for action.
To research and develop healthy climate solutions comprising global food security, ecosystem regeneration and carbon balance in seas and soils.
The environmental law & policy center (elpc) is the midwest's leading public interest environmental legal advocacy and ecobusiness innovation organization, and among the nation's leaders. we develop and lead successful strategic…
Climate group advances climate action by mobilizing business and government leadership to drive systemic decarbonization across energy, transport, and industry, while engaging the public through large-scale convenings and global platforms.…
Environment next supports individuals, nonprofits and businesses around the world on solutions to complex climate issues. we provide leadership, outreach and communication support, grants, and investments to empower leaders and their ideas…
To develop and promote a carbon dividends framework - based on carbon fees whose revenues are rebated to citizens through dividends - as the most cost-effective, equitable, and politically viable climate solution.
The organization's mission is to advocate for policy that meets the scale and urgency of our environmental challenges. as a massachusetts-based organization that engages in advocacy across a full spectrum of climate, environmental, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Sierra Health 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 26 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 0% 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.
529 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. 529 of the 593 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 MOVEMENT STRATEGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds NRDC ACTION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds The Partnership Project Inc ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CITY TRANSPORTATION OFFICIALS INC ↗
- Who funds THE ROSE FOUNDATION FOR COMMUNITIES THE ENVIRONMENT ↗
- Who funds COMING CLEAN INC ↗
- Who funds LOW INCOME INVESTMENT FUND ↗
- Who funds BlueGreen Alliance Foundation ↗
- Who funds Elevate Energy ↗
- Who funds STAND ↗
- Who funds Solutions Project Inc ↗
- Who funds PARTNERSHIP FOR SOUTHERN EQUITY ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BLUEPRINT NORTH CAROLINA ↗
- Who funds FAIR DISTRICTS FUND ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENT NORTH CAROLINA RESEARCH AND POLICY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NW ENERGY COALITION ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR MARKET TRANSFORMATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST ENERGY EFFICIENCY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds West Harlem Environmental Action Inc ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds GREEN LIGHT NEW YORKINC DBA BUILDING ENERGY EXCHANGE (BEEX) ↗
- Who funds Western Resource Advocates ↗
- Who funds AMERICA WORKS USA ↗
- Who funds Environmental Health Coalition ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR A JUST SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA BLACK ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds PEOPLES WATER BOARD COALITION ↗
- Who funds Community Food Advocates Inc ↗
- Who funds METEC ↗
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: United States Energy Foundation · The Energy Foundation · Resources Legacy Fund · Movement Strategy Center · Windward Fund · Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated · The Schmidt Family Foundation · The Partnership Project Inc · Patagoniaorg · Solutions Project Inc · Sierra Club · Energy Action 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 Natural Resources Defense Council Inc 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.
- University of Delaware — 30% of income from government
- Coalition of Communities of Color — 15% of income from government
- New England Aquarium Corporation — 12% of income from government
- Yale University — 12% of income from government
- Sea Research Foundation Inc — 8% of income from government
- The Orion Society Inc — 2% of income from government
- Anthropocene Alliance — 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.