· Private foundation
Riff Foundation
Its FY2024 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
100% of Riff Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2020, the last year Riff Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 46 organizations, $4M. 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2020
- $10k–50k16 grants · $220k
- $50k–250k42 grants · $3.5M
- $250k+2 grants · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Thousand Currents | $250,000 |
| Grassroots International | $250,000 |
| Southerners on New Ground | $100,000 |
| Indigenous Environmental Network | $100,000 |
| Mijente Support Committee | $100,000 |
| Community Initiatives | $100,000 |
| NDN Collective | $100,000 |
| Alliance for Global Justice | $100,000 |
| NEO Philanthropy | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| Florida Immigrant Coalition | $100,000 |
| St James Infirmary | $100,000 |
| Highlander Research and Education Center | $100,000 |
| Demos | $100,000 |
| Voces de la Frontera | $100,000 |
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 (FY18–20, $995k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 75% 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.
8 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2020, 0 since wound down; 47 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (too recent to call). Read against FY2020, 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 FY2023, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k 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
COMMUNITY INITIATIVES2× · 2018–2020 · $250k · revenue +136%
VOCES DE LA FRONTERA INC2× · 2018–2020 · $200k · revenue +381%- EJEssie Justice Group2× · 2018–2020 · $200k · revenue +105%
Funded once
- TJTGI Justice Projectone grant, 2018 · $100k
- CDCentro De Trabajadores Unidos En Luchaone grant, 2018 · $100k
- FTFAMILIA TRANS QUEER LIBERATION MOVEMENTone grant, 2018 · $75k
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.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
Detention Watch Network seeks to end the cruel system of immigration detention via programs of grassroots organizing, strategic communications, and collective advocacy.
Fuerza Laboral is a workers' rights center whose mission is to shift the balance of power in our economy in favor of workers by educating, training, and organizing workers to become community leaders; taking direct action to recover unpaid…
Forward Together is a national reproductive justice organization that centers people, families, and communities who experience reproductive oppression. They prioritize queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and other peoples of color and utilize…
Workers Rights
Asian Immigrant Women Advocates empowers low-income, limited English speaking immigrant women and youth through education, leadership development and civic participation programs.
LexCollective is a not-for-profit organization that addresses the most extreme forms of social, racial, economic, and environmental injustices around the world, such as mass atrocities, human trafficking, environmental destruction, and…
Colectiva Legal del Pueblo is a non-hierarchal collective organization founded for and by undocumented immigrants working to build community leadership and power for migrant justice through legal services, advocacy and education.
Fund for Justice is a nationally connected social impact research and advocacy organization that works to achieve fundamental, systemic reform by addressing policies and practicies that prevent individuals from reaching their full…
Justice Action Center JAC pilots an innovative model that advances the rights of immigrant communities by connecting cutting-edge impact litigation and compelling narrative and communications content. The purpose of JAC is to advance the…
The Equal Justice Society (EJS) is transforming the nations consciousness on racethrough law, social science, and the arts. EJS works to dismantle structural andinstitutional racism to advance robust equal protection under the Fourteenth…
Latino Union works to defend the rights and dignity of contingent workers, including the right to immigrate, work, live free of oppression and violence, and provide for oneself and one's family.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is St James Infirmary. 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 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
50 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. 50 of the 65 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 Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds GRASSROOTS INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds THOUSAND CURRENTS ↗
- Who funds VOCES DE LA FRONTERA INC ↗
- Who funds Essie Justice Group ↗
- Who funds INITIATE JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds COALITION TO STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST NATIVE WOMEN ↗
- Who funds NATIVE MOVEMENT ↗
- Who funds MIJENTE SUPPORT COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds Alliance for Global Justice Corp ↗
- Who funds NDN COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA LATINO ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERNERS ON NEW GROUND INC ↗
- Who funds DEMOS A NETWORK FOR IDEAS AND ACTION LTD ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DRUM Desis Rising Up and Moving Inc ↗
- Who funds ST JAMES INFIRMARY ↗
- Who funds INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Florida Immigrant Coalition Inc ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds Transgender Law Center ↗
- Who funds CENTRO DE TRABAJADORES UNIDOS EN LUCHA ↗
- Who funds Mujeres Unidas y Activas ↗
- Who funds GRASSROOTS GLOBAL JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds Farmworker Association of Florida Inc ↗
- Who funds TEWA WOMEN UNITED ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds JUNTOS ↗
- Who funds Affect Real Change Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUTH UNITED FOR CHANGE ↗
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: Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Tides Foundation · Proteus Fund Inc · New Venture Fund · Common Counsel Foundation · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Impactassetsinc · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · Groundswell Fund · Tides Center · Solidaire Network Inc · Novo 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 Riff 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.
- Migrant Justice Inc — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Riff Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Riff 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.