· Private foundation
Pivotal Philanthropies 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
65% of Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to National Philanthropic Trust, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 80 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 42 organizations, $48M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2022–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- $10k–50k3 grants · $40k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.7M
- $250k+46 grants · $46M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEW VENTURE FUND | $4,700,000 |
| PANORAMA GLOBAL | $2,700,000 |
| SCHOOL-BASED HEALTH ALLIANCE | $2,400,000 |
| HOPEWELL FUND | $2,400,000 |
| RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $2,306,200 |
| SURGO HEALTH PBC | $2,009,141 |
| ADVERTISING COUNCIL INC | $1,850,000 |
| NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP FOR WOMEN AND FAMILIES INC | $1,600,000 |
| AMERICA ACHIEVES INC | $1,500,000 |
| CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE | $1,500,000 |
| THE COMPUTING RESEARCH ASSOCIATION INC | $1,500,000 |
| VOTERUNLEAD | $1,250,000 |
| THE JED FOUNDATION | $1,142,600 |
| THINK OF US | $1,000,000 |
| NEW VENTURE FUND | $1,000,000 |
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 (FY22–24, $35.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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
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 50% of Pivotal Philanthropies 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.
32 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2023, 2 since wound down; 73 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 33% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $115M 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
NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP FOR WOMEN AND FAMILIES2× · 2023–2024 · $16M · revenue +128%
CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE2× · 2023–2024 · $7.0M · revenue +66%- PGPANORAMA GLOBAL3× · 2022–2024 · $5.9M · revenue +50%
Funded once
- TATURNOUT ACTIVISM INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $250k · revenue +133%
- BCBaby Cakes and Brunchgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $250k · revenue +48% · 70% of their budget
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.
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For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Think of Us and the most unlike its peers is Hopelab Foundation 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 19 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) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
113 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. 113 of the 122 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 PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ↗
- Who funds HOPEWELL FUND ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds BLUE MERIDIAN PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP FOR WOMEN AND FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds STATES UNITED DEMOCRACY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE ↗
- Who funds PANORAMA GLOBAL ↗
- Who funds School-Based Health Alliance ↗
- Who funds REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM FOR ALL ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE 19TH NEWS ↗
- Who funds WORKMONEY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds MS FOUNDATION FOR WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP FOR TOMORROW ↗
- Who funds National Domestic Workers Alliance Inc ↗
- Who funds THE ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE COMPUTING RESEARCH ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds REWRITING THE CODE INC ↗
- Who funds THE ADVERTISING COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FLORENCE CRITTENTON MISSION ↗
- Who funds ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS FOR GENDER EQUITY INC ↗
- Who funds THE JED FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON CENTER FOR EQUITABLE GROWTH INC ↗
- Who funds REPRESENTWOMEN 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: Tides Foundation · The Ford Foundation · Foundation to Promote Open Society · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · New Venture Fund · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Skoll Fund · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · New York Women's Foundation Inc · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund 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 Pivotal Philanthropies 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- National Florence Crittenton Mission — 24% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Rutgers University Foundation — 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 Pivotal Philanthropies Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Pivotal Philanthropies 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.