· Public charity
Retina Research Foundation
The mission of the RETINA RESEARCH FOUNDATION is to reduce retinal blindness worldwide by funding programs in research and education.
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.
The 21 grants below total $1,934,287 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,458,577 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $524,290 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k15 grants · $650k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $584k
- $250k+1 grant · $700k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON | $700,000 |
| BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE | $220,046 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - IRVINE (UCI) | $94,954 |
| UNIV OF MICHIGAN ANN ARBOR MI | $90,000 |
| MEEI OCULAR GENOMICS INSTITUTE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL | $90,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY | $88,883 |
| NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY | $45,000 |
| SCHEPENS EYE RESEARCH INSTITUTE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL | $45,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINIOS AT CHICAGO | $45,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA - INSTITUTE FOR VISION RESEARCH | $45,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA | $45,000 |
| TEXAS A&M HEALTH SCIENCE CENTER | $45,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN FRANCISCO (UCSF) | $45,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MEDICAL BRANCH - GALVESTON | $45,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT | $45,000 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 51% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +63% since the first grant, against +50% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 2 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $90k 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
- BCBaylor College of Medicine8× · 2017–2024 · $2.5M · revenue +67%
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY5× · 2020–2024 · $208k · revenue +63%- VUVanderbilt University Medical Center5× · 2020–2024 · $208k · revenue +76%
Funded once
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $30k · revenue +50%
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.
THE MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY ("THE INFIRMARY") IS A NOT-FOR-PROFIT TEACHING HOSPITAL CONDUCTING PATIENT CARE AND RESEARCH. THE INFIRMARY IS A TEACHING HOSPITAL OF HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL AND AN INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR RESEARCH.…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
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…
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.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
The washington university is a co-educational, nondenominational university with a long and distinguished history of teaching, research and (cont'd on schedule o)
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…
Organization's mission: boston university is an international, comprehensive, private research university, committed to educating students to be reflective, resourceful individuals ready to live, adapt, and lead in an interconnected world.…
See Disclosure Above.
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…
The central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Kentucky Research Foundation and the most unlike its peers is University of Miami. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 27 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 Baylor College of Medicine ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds University of Kentucky Research Foundation ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION OF THE MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY INC ↗
- Who funds WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Schepens Eye Research Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds University of Miami ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
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: Vanderbilt University Medical Center · University of Pittsburgh · American Heart Association 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 Retina Research 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.
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 4% 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 Retina Research Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Retina Research 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.