· Private foundation
Philip Stephenson Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $83k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $502k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY | $200,000 |
| OCEAN EXPLORATION TRUST | $100,000 |
| THE LEATHERBACK PROJECT | $77,000 |
| THE EXPLORERS CLUB | $75,025 |
| THE OO PROJECT INC | $50,000 |
| SSSAS SAINTS FUND | $25,000 |
| THE LANGLEY SCHOOL | $16,500 |
| THE OCEAN FOUNDATION | $11,000 |
| NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| LEGACY PHILANTHROPY WORKS | $10,000 |
| INOVA ALEXANDRIA HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| OCEANS CAUCUS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| INSTITUTE OF WORLD POLITICS | $5,000 |
| BIODIVERSITY FUNDERS GROUP | $3,600 |
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 (FY17–17, $200) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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
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.
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 +83% since the first grant, against -4% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 13 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- NGNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY8× · 2017–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +11%
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES4× · 2017–2020 · $900k · revenue +18%- OEOCEAN EXPLORATION TRUST INC7× · 2017–2024 · $700k · revenue +83%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $200k
- NGNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PARTNERS LLCone grant, 2020 · $50k
- HUHARVARD UNIVERSITY BELFER CENTERone grant, 2018 · $25k
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
To advocate for policy changes by governments and corporations in order to preserve ocean life and return the oceans to their former abundance.
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
To sustain, restore, and enhance the nation's fish, wildlife, plants, and habitats.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
Ilsi is a global, nonprofit federation dedicated to generating and advancing emerging science and groundbreaking research to ensure foods are safe, nutritious and sustainable, and that they improve planetary and human health and well-being…
The aquarium of the pacific's mission is to instill a sense of wonder, respect, and stewardship for the pacific ocean, its inhabitants, and ecosystems.
California ocean science trust (ost) is a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating progress towards a healthy and productive ocean future for california. created by state legislation, ost bridges the gap between cutting-edge…
Cdp north america, inc. 's ("cdp-na") vision for the future is a thriving economy that works for people and planet in the long term. we focus investors and companies on taking urgent action to build a truly sustainable economy by measuring…
Unavco, a non-profit university-governed consortium, facilitates geoscience research and education using geodesy.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and the most unlike its peers is International Conservation Caucus Network. 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 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 12% 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 58 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 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ↗
- Who funds OCEAN EXPLORATION TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds THE EXPLORERS CLUB ↗
- Who funds PLANET WOMEN ↗
- Who funds Sylvia Earle AllianceMission Blue ↗
- Who funds OCEAN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds KITO IMPACT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE LANGLEY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds ST STEPHEN'S AND ST AGNES SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds VISION TO LEARN ↗
- Who funds BIRDSCARIBBEAN ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds The Ocean Foundation ↗
- Who funds WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CONSULTATIVE GROUP ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY INC Biodiversity Funders Grp ↗
- Who funds LEGACY PHILANTHROPY WORKS ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL HIGH SCHOOL IN VIRGINIA ↗
- Who funds THE JED FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL SOCIETY ↗
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 David and Lucile Packard Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Seattle Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Verizon Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Philip Stephenson 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.
- National Marine Sanctuary Foundation — 88% of income from government
- The Coral Restoration Foundation Inc — 16% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Ocean Exploration Trust Inc — 5% of income from government
- Birdscaribbean — 4% of income from government
- Capital Hospice — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Philip Stephenson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Philip Stephenson 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.