· Public charity
Research to Prevent Blindness Endowment Fund Inc
Rpbef provides the organizational and financial resources necessary to support a comprehensive program of eye research.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 42% of RESEARCH TO PREVENT BLINDNESS ENDOWMENT FUND INC’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k7 grants · $212k
- $50k–250k32 grants · $3.7M
- $250k+15 grants · $4.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL-MEEI | $350,000 |
| THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | $350,000 |
| STATE UNIVERSITY OF NY UPSTATE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY | $350,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO COLLEGE OF MEDICINE | $350,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF UTAH HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER | $350,000 |
| WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN SAINT LOUIS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | $350,000 |
| THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | $300,000 |
| NEW YORK UNIVERSITY GROSSMAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | $300,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | $300,000 |
| COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS | $300,000 |
| OREGON HEALTH & SCIENCE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | $300,000 |
| WEST VIRGINA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | $300,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF UTAH HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER | $300,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY FEINBERG SCHOOL OF MEDICINE | $300,000 |
| FOUNDATION OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF OPHTHALMOLOGY | $280,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY18–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 79% of your 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 +51% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 1 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; $300k 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
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY7× · 2018–2024 · $4.0M · revenue +76%
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY7× · 2018–2024 · $3.4M · revenue +51%- BCBaylor College of Medicine6× · 2018–2023 · $1.7M · revenue +49%
Funded once
- IUIndiana University School of Medicineone grant, 2021 · $300k
ICAHN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT MOUNT SINAIgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $300k · revenue +39%- PSPENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $300k
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.
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…
University of minnesota physicians serves as the integrated group practice for the university of minnesota medical school full-time faculty to provide the highest quality healthcare to patients and their families.university of minnesota…
The mission of Rush is to improve the health of the individuals and diverse communities we serve through the integration of outstanding patient care, education, research and community partnerships.
Education, research, medical services and other public services.
We educate the next generation of leaders to improve the health of our society.
MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR ASSOCIATES, INC. ("MEEA") IS A SPECIALTY PHYSICIAN GROUP PRACTICE. IT PROVIDES CARE FOR PATIENTS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY, INC. ("MEEI"), A RELATED ORGANIZATION. THE PRACTICE SPECIALIZES IN…
To educate caring, inspired health care professionals who are prepared to deliver collaborative, patient-centric health care in an interprofessional environment.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Thomas jefferson university ("tju") is a comprehensive university with preeminence in transdisciplinary, experiential professional education, research and discovery, delivering exceptional value for the 21st century students with…
The mission of southern california university of health sciences (scu) is to educate students as competent, caring and successful practitioners of integrative healthcare. the university is committed to providing excellence in academics,…
The mission of the edward via college of osteopathic medicine (vcom) is to prepare globally-minded, community-focused physicians to meet the needs of rural and medically underserved populations and promote research to improve human health.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Trustees of Tufts College and the most unlike its peers is The Heed Ophthalmic Foundation. 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 65 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 54 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 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS EYE & EAR INFIRMARY ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds OPHTHALMOLOGY MEDICAL SERVICE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds Schepens Eye Research Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND CLINIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Miami ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF OPHTHALMOLOGY ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds The Research Foundation for The State University of New York ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR EYE AND VISION RESEARCH ↗
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: Research to Prevent Blindness Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift 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 Research to Prevent Blindness Endowment 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.
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% 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 Research to Prevent Blindness Endowment Fund Inc?
Find your warmest path to Research to Prevent Blindness Endowment Fund Inc 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.