· Public charity
Proteus Fund Inc
Proteus fund connects philanthropy to the frontlines of social justice to advance racial, gender, queer, and disability justice, and an inclusive, fully representative democracy.
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
- $10k–50k107 grants · $3.3M
- $50k–250k101 grants · $8.8M
- $250k+11 grants · $9.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VOTER REGISTRATION PROJECT EDUCATION FUND | $2,000,000 |
| UNIDOSUS | $2,000,000 |
| PROTEUS ACTION LEAGUE | $1,799,000 |
| THE VOTER PARTICIPATION CENTER | $1,000,000 |
| REFRAME | $750,000 |
| SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER | $500,000 |
| RETHINK MEDIA | $340,000 |
| GREATER NEW ORLEANS FOUNDATION | $305,000 |
| NONPROFIT VOTE INC | $300,000 |
| SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS | $276,250 |
| THE OPEN MIND LEGACY PROJECT | $250,000 |
| DEFENDING RIGHTS AND DISSENT | $240,500 |
| RODERICK & SOLANGE MACARTHUR JUSTICE CENTER | $200,000 |
| FRACTURED ATLAS | $200,000 |
| WOVEN COLLECTIVE INC | $199,146 |
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, $8.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 89% 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.
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 +53% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.
384 repeat relationships — 154 still active in FY2024, 230 since wound down; 59 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, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5.7M 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
- VRVOTER REGISTRATION PROJECT7× · 2017–2023 · $28M · revenue +643% · 28% of their budget
- TVTHE VOTER PARTICIPATION CENTER7× · 2017–2024 · $9.0M · revenue ×13
ALLIANCE FOR YOUTH ORGANIZING4× · 2017–2021 · $1.3M · revenue +630%
Funded once
- SISTATE INNOVATION EXCHANGEgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $1.0M · revenue +28%
- CFCENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND CIVIC LIFEone grant, 2022 · $1.0M · revenue -55%
- LOLEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUNDgraduated2× · 2020–2021 · $1.0M · revenue +116%
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.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
Fund for Justice is a nationally connected social impact research and advocacy organization that works to achieve fundamental, systemic reform by addressing policies and practicies that prevent individuals from reaching their full…
Oregon Justice Network is an alliance built and staffed by criminal legal system impacted people advocating for the well-being of people affected or at-risk of being affected by carceral systems. Our work centers around restorative…
Forward Together is a national reproductive justice organization that centers people, families, and communities who experience reproductive oppression. They prioritize queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and other peoples of color and utilize…
Serve as a partner, educator, and guide for philanthropy in reimagining practices that advance a thriving and just world.
Justice Action Center JAC pilots an innovative model that advances the rights of immigrant communities by connecting cutting-edge impact litigation and compelling narrative and communications content. The purpose of JAC is to advance the…
Detention Watch Network seeks to end the cruel system of immigration detention via programs of grassroots organizing, strategic communications, and collective advocacy.
Southern coalition for social justice partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities across the south to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights. through an intersectional and…
Advance democracy, equity, and self-determination in U.S. territories through participatory advocacy, narrative and cultural change, and ecosystem building.
The Equal Justice Society (EJS) is transforming the nations consciousness on racethrough law, social science, and the arts. EJS works to dismantle structural andinstitutional racism to advance robust equal protection under the Fourteenth…
LexCollective is a not-for-profit organization that addresses the most extreme forms of social, racial, economic, and environmental injustices around the world, such as mass atrocities, human trafficking, environmental destruction, and…
Colorofchange.org works to strengthen the voice of black americans and increase the level of accountability and responsiveness of elected officials to underrepresented black constituencies using the internet as a lobbying and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Voices of Community Activists & Leaders (Vocal-Ny) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center. 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
903 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. 903 of the 911 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 VOTER REGISTRATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds THE VOTER PARTICIPATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds ReThink Media ↗
- Who funds PROTEUS ACTION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds UNIDOSUS ↗
- Who funds VOTER REGISTRATION PROJECT EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Nonprofit VOTE Inc ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR YOUTH ORGANIZING ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH INC ↗
- Who funds COMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds PANORAMA GLOBAL ↗
- Who funds REPOWER FUND ↗
- Who funds GRASSROOTS INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds STATE INNOVATION EXCHANGE ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR TECHNOLOGY AND CIVIC LIFE ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds THE TRISKELES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SISTERSONG INC ↗
- Who funds COMMON COUNSEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds MOVEMENT STRATEGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE GREATER NEW ORLEANS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JOBS WITH JUSTICE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds EQUALITY FOUNDATION OF GA INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT VOTE INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT SOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM J BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds BOLD FUTURES NM ↗
- Who funds NC For the People Action (formerly NC Voters for Clean Elections) ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CIVIC POLICY ↗
- Who funds DEFENDING RIGHTS AND DISSENT INC ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF NEW MEXICO FOUNDATION ↗
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: Borealis Philanthropy · Groundswell Fund · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Solidaire Network Inc · Common Counsel Foundation · Ms Foundation for Women Inc · Solidago Foundation · Tides Center · Marguerite Casey Foundation · Women Donors Network · Windward 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 Proteus Fund 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.
- Center for Intercultural Organizing — 28% of income from government
- Lewis & Clark College — 2% of income from government
- Connecticut Citizen Research Group Inc — 0% of income from government
- Hope Community Center Inc — 0% of income from government
- Miracle of Love 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.