· Private foundation
Ray of Light Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
52% of Ray of Light Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Social Impact Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 3 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year Ray of Light Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 5 organizations, $329k. 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $279k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| KABBALAH CENTRE INTERNATIONAL | $100,000 |
| VOICES FOR CHILDREN | $89,713 |
| V-DAY | $89,000 |
| THE EDWARD CHARLES FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| FAUNA AND FLORA INTERNATIONAL | $20,000 |
| ROSIE'S THEATER KIDS | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–22, $300k) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +120% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2022, 9 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $250k 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
- SHSHINING HOPE FOR COMMUNITIES INC5× · 2017–2023 · $728k · revenue +231%
- CHCREATING HOPE INTERNATIONAL5× · 2017–2021 · $650k · revenue +15%
AMERICAN NEAR EAST REFUGEE AID4× · 2018–2021 · $350k · revenue +153%
Funded once
- GPGATES PHILANTHROPY PARTNERSone grant, 2020 · $1.0M · revenue -88%
- BRBRITISH RED CROSS SOCIETYone grant, 2017 · $125k
EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY SUPPORT FUND INCone grant, 2019 · $60k · revenue +10%
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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To lead and coordinate the global initiative to address and prevent criminalization, violence, and impunity against indigenous peoples towards strengthening their collectives, solidarity, and actions.
Pro publica is an independent, non-profit, pulitzer prize-winning newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories. [see continuation on schedule o] we produce…
Our mission is to build a movement of global citizens whose actions will help achieve our vision of a world without extreme poverty.
Rockefeller philanthropy advisors aims to accelerate philanthropy in pursuit of a just world
The transgender legal defense and education fund is committed to ending discrimination based on gender identity and expression, and to achieving equality for transgender people through public education, test-case litigation, direct legal…
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
To encourage individuals, corporations, foundations and donor governments to support the global fund, an international foundation focused on ending three of the world's most deadly infectious diseases.
Our mission as a global alliance is to provide strategies, research, and resources that support the critical agency and influence of women's foundations and gender justice funders in the movement for equality, justice, and power for all.
The leadership foundation, inc. (the foundation), established in 1990, is the mechanism by which iwf members advance the next generation of women leaders. the foundation accelerates the careers of top-performing women by offering…
The elizabeth glaser pediatric aids foundation (egpaf) is a proven leader in the fight against pediatric hiv/aids and has reached over 33 million pregnant women with services to prevent transmission of hiv to their babies. to date, egpaf…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Lgbtq Task Force and the most unlike its peers is Lycee Francais De New York. 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 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 41 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 Raising Malawi Inc ↗
- Who funds Social Impact Fund ↗
- Who funds GATES PHILANTHROPY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds SHINING HOPE FOR COMMUNITIES INC ↗
- Who funds CREATING HOPE INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds V-Day ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN NEAR EAST REFUGEE AID ↗
- Who funds UNRWA USA NATIONAL COMMITTEE INC ↗
- Who funds THE EMPOWERMENT PLAN ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ITALIAN AMERICAN FOUNDATIONINC ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN BOXING GYM YOUTH PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds HUMAN APPEAL ↗
- Who funds VOICES FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY SUPPORT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds PURCHASE COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ROSIE'S THEATER KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds GLAAD INC ↗
- Who funds EDWARD CHARLES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TJ MARTELL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FAUNA & FLORA INTERNATIONAL USA INC ↗
- Who funds TURKISH PHILANTHROPY FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds PAROLE PREPARATION PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATES FOR TRANS EQUALITY EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds SANDY HOOK PROMISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LYCEE FRANCAIS DE NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STATES UNITED TO PREVENT GUN VIOLENC CO GPEC-ICHV ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL LGBTQ TASK FORCE ↗
- Who funds MARCH FOR OUR LIVES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds NYC Together 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: Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Ford Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Tides Foundation
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 Ray of Light 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.
- Sandy Hook Promise 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.