· Public charity
Pema Chodron Foundation
Support and encouragement of Buddhist monasticism and the Buddhist tradition world-wide, and to manifest the Buddhist vision by providing support and assistance to community-based organizations that serve marginalized populations such as distressed families (especially children and teens), abused individuals, the incarcerated, and drug…
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 21 grants below total $1,059,431 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,674,285 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $614,854 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
- $10k–50k15 grants · $274k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $485k
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Drala Mountain Center | $300,000 |
| Mangala Shri Bhuti | $200,000 |
| Tsoknyi Nuns | $110,000 |
| Drala Mountain Center | $75,392 |
| Sravasti Abbey | $50,000 |
| Home Boy Industries | $50,000 |
| Konchok Foundation | $49,629 |
| Malezi School | $36,100 |
| Naropa Univ - CT Legacy Fdn | $25,000 |
| Berkana Institute | $20,000 |
| Tergar Institute | $20,000 |
| Tibetan Nuns Project | $20,000 |
| Marpa Foundation Endowment | $15,686 |
| Dorje Khyung Dzong RetreatCtr | $15,000 |
| Himalayan Childrens Fund | $12,624 |
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 (FY20–23, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 70% 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 — $482k on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 3 regions, $468k to organizations and $14k to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: Archive & transltn · Monastic & educatnl · Scholarships
Stated purpose: Monastic & educ · Scholarship
Stated purpose: Scholarships
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 20% of Pema Chodron 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. Read by recipient address, 74% of the giving stays in CO; read by stated purpose it is 58% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
22 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 4 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100k 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
- DMDRALA MOUNTAIN CENTER Formerly Shambhala Mountain Center5× · 2020–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +49%
HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES6× · 2019–2024 · $310k · revenue +160%- NUNaropa University7× · 2018–2024 · $180k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- SDSHEDRUB DEVELOPMENT FUND INCone grant, 2023 · $100k
- TMTHE MIDDLE WAY INITIATIVE INCone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue -47%
- CPCRESTONE PEAK COMMUNITY HOUSINGgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +462%
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.
Buddhist Meditation and Study
The mission of Namgyal Monastery Dharma Center is to be a transformational hub of compassionate and human education for all.
The nyingma institute was founded in 1972 by tibetan teacher and author tarthang tulku to present the teachings of the tibetan tradition to the west. (see schedule o for full statement)
To advance the teachings of the Sakya and Karma Kagyu schools of Buddhism as embodied by His Holiness Sakya Trichin Ngawang Kunga Thegchin, His Holiness the Karmapa Thaye Dorje and the Fourth Karma Thinley Rinpoche, under the spiritual…
To provide support and improve health and overall well-being of Buddhist monastics, especially in poor and distressed areas in Nepal and other Asian countries. Planned activities include securing food and medical services for monastics in…
The Treasury of Lives is biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia and Himalayan Region. The Treasury provides an accessible and well-researched biography of a wide range of figures, from Buddhist masters to artists and political…
To facilitate the practice of the dharma or the path of awakening in the buddhist tradition, particularly within the dudjom tersar lineage of the nyingma school of tibetan buddhism
The mission of Dharma Drum Retreat Center Inc is to promote the practice of Chinese Chan Buddhism in the western hemisphere. The teaching practiced and taught is based on the Dharma Drum Mountain Lineage developed by the founder Chan…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Tergar Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Frederick P Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 23 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 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.
26 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. 26 of the 34 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 DRALA MOUNTAIN CENTER Formerly Shambhala Mountain Center ↗
- Who funds HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES ↗
- Who funds Konchok Foundation ↗
- Who funds MAHTABE INC ↗
- Who funds Naropa University ↗
- Who funds SHEDRUB DEVELOPMENT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds TIBETAN NUNS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Treasure Caretaker Training ↗
- Who funds Prison Dharma Network Inc ↗
- Who funds CHRONICLES OF CHOGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE ↗
- Who funds LADIES EMPOWERMENT AND ACTION PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds SAHALOKA MONASTIC COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds Friends of Surmang Inc dba Surmang Foundation ↗
- Who funds MARPA FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY PRACTICE & SUPPORT OF BUDDHA DHARMA ↗
- Who funds HIMALAYAN CHILDRENS FUND ↗
- Who funds OMEGA INSTITUTE FOR HOLISTIC STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds TSOKNYI HUMANITARIAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BERKANA INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE MIDDLE WAY INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds CRESTONE PEAK COMMUNITY HOUSING ↗
- Who funds TERGAR INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds THE PROFOUND TREASURY DHARMA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE FREDERICK P LENZ FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN BUDDHISM ↗
- Who funds I Grow Chicago NFP ↗
- Who funds THE LTP FOUNDATION INC ↗
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: The Owsley Brown III Philanthropic Found · The Frederick P Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism · Tess Evans Charitable Foundation · Timely Rain · BESS Family Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Boston Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Network for Good · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Pema Chodron 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Pema Chodron Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Pema Chodron 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.