· Private foundation
Richard and Mary Bard Foundation
Its FY2025 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
86% of Richard and Mary Bard Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Bryan Area Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 11 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year Richard and Mary Bard Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 8 organizations, $66k. 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 FY2023–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $16k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TUNNELS TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH | $10,000 |
| CONSRVATIVE PARTNERSHIP INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| THE OHIO STAT UNIVERSITY FOUNDATI | $10,000 |
| HILLSDALE COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| NORTH NAPLES UNITED METHODIST CHURC | $5,000 |
| NORTH ROME BAPTIST CHURCH | $2,000 |
| FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST | $1,000 |
| SIGMA CHI FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| COMMUNITY HOSPITALS & WELLNESS | $1,000 |
| HOPE COLLEGE | $1,000 |
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 (FY23–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 93% 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.
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 +33% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, 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 FY2025, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $600 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
THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION3× · 2023–2025 · $30k · revenue +33%
Conservative Partnership Institute3× · 2023–2025 · $21k · revenue +77%- HCHOPE COLLEGE3× · 2023–2025 · $11k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- LHLenawee Humane Societyone grant, 2023 · $250 · revenue -26%
- NBNAPLES BOTANICAL GARDEN INCone grant, 2023 · $145 · revenue +19%
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.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
Marietta college (mc) provides a strong foundation for a lifetime of leadership, critical thinking, and problem solving. we achieve this mission by offering undergraduates a contemporary liberal arts education and graduate students an…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Williams College strives to achieve educational excellence by fostering a community of learning in collaboration with students, faculty, staff, devoted alumni and parents.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Saint anselm is a catholic, benedictine college providing all of its students a distinctive liberal arts education that incorporates opportunities for professional and career preparation. it does so in a learning community that encourages…
To be the trusted partner in all healthcare decisions and to improve health by providing highly accessible, world-class care and services.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Lenawee Humane Society. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 19 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 BRYAN AREA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Conservative Partnership Institute ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOPE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HOSPITALS AND WELLNESS CENTERS ↗
- Who funds PARKVIEW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Sigma Chi Foundation ↗
- Who funds Lenawee Humane Society ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVANCY OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA ↗
- Who funds NAPLES BOTANICAL GARDEN 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: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Richard and Mary Bard 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.
- Naples Botanical Garden Inc — 3% 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.
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Find your warmest path to Richard and Mary Bard 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.