· Private foundation
Richard T Button 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2019.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2019
- Under $10k38 grants · $93k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DEVELOPMENT IN GARDENING | $20,000 |
| ICE DANCE INTERNATIONAL | $6,000 |
| NORTH SALEM VOLUNTEER AMBULANCE CO | $6,000 |
| NORTH SALEM OPEN LAND FDN | $5,500 |
| CITYMEALS ON WHEELS | $5,000 |
| HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL SURGERY | $4,000 |
| NORTH SHORE ANIMAL LEAGUE | $4,000 |
| CLASSICAL AMERICAN HOMES PRES TR | $4,000 |
| WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE | $4,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $4,000 |
| THE ROYAL OAK FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| NORTHERN WESTCHESTER HOSPITAL FDN | $3,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $3,000 |
| THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY | $3,000 |
| PUTNAM COUNTY LAND TRUST | $3,000 |
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 (FY17–19) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 86% 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 +119% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2019, 2 since wound down; 30 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (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 FY2019, 26% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $82k 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
- IDICE DANCE INTERNATIONAL2× · 2017–2019 · $16k · revenue +34%
- NSNORTH SALEM OPEN LAND FOUNDATION INC3× · 2017–2019 · $9k · revenue +338%
- RHRICHARD HAMPTON JENRETTE FOUNDATION2× · 2017–2019 · $7k · revenue +65%
Funded once
- ITICE THEATRE OF NEW YORKgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +29%
- BMBARTOW-PELL MANSION MUSEUMone grant, 2018 · $3k
- GCGARDEN CONSERVANCY SOCIETYone grant, 2017 · $3k
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 museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
The long island museum is dedicated to inspiring people of all ages with an understanding and enjoyment of american art, history and carriages as expressed through the heritage of long island and its diverse communities.
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
The metropolitan museum of art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas.
The Frick Collection (the "Collection") operates an internationally recognized art museum and library program for the inspiration and enjoyment of the public and for the advancement of the study of fine arts and kindred subjects.
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Garden Conservancy Inc and the most unlike its peers is Boscobel Restoration Inc. 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 41 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 49 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 DEVELOPMENT IN GARDENING ↗
- Who funds ICE DANCE INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds NORTH SALEM OPEN LAND FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RICHARD HAMPTON JENRETTE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CITYMEALS-ON-WHEELS ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE ANIMAL LEAGUE AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds ICE THEATRE OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds THE ROYAL OAK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PUTNAM COUNTY LAND TRUST SAVE OPEN SPACE INC ↗
- Who funds THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN WESTCHESTER HOSPITAL CENTER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds FRESH AIR FUND ↗
- Who funds Westchester Land Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC HOUSE TRUST OF NEW YORK CITY INC ↗
- Who funds BOSCOBEL RESTORATION INC ↗
- Who funds BEDFORD AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds STUDIO IN A SCHOOL ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds New York Historical Society ↗
- Who funds CROTON FALLS VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT DEPARTMENT INC ↗
- Who funds THE DECORATIVE ARTS TRUST ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds JERICHO PROJECT ↗
- Who funds HUDSON RIVER MUSEUM OF WESTCHESTER ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
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: The New York Community Trust · Jewish Communal Fund · Greater Hudson Heritage Network · Ibm International Foundation · The Handley Foundation Inc · Malkin Fund Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Richard T Button 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.
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 Richard T Button Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Richard T Button 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.