How much does Rocking Chair Foundation give?

Rocking Chair Foundation reported 50 grants totaling $70,400 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 43 and 48 organizations a year over FY2019 to FY2024.

What does Rocking Chair Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2019 to FY2025, its largest causes are Education (36%), Crime & Legal (23%), Arts & Culture (12%).

Who are Rocking Chair Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2019 to FY2025: The Legal Aid Society ($150k), Jackie Robinson Foundation Inc ($91k), New York Studio School ($66k).

Does Rocking Chair Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 21% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Rocking Chair Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as Rocking Chair Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include The New York Community Trust, The Chicago Community Trust, Jewish Communal Fund.

Where is Rocking Chair Foundation based?

Rocking Chair Foundation is based in NY.

Rocking Chair Foundation

Rocking Chair Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Rocking Chair 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.

$70k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$10k

Largest

01What it funds

0195% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2019 to 2025.

Education$291kCrime & Legal$186kArts & Culture$93kHealth$85kCivil Rights$37kHuman Services$37kEnvironment$15kYouth Development$7kOther$0

02FY2025 · 50 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k49 grants · $60k
$10k–50k1 grant · $10k

$1,000

Median grant

States reached

$244k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
LYMPHOMA RESEARCH FOUNDATION	$10,000
NEW YORK STUDIO SCHOOL	$7,600
NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS	$5,500
MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER	$5,000
BRONX HIGH SCHOOL OF SCIENCE	$3,000
HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL SURGERY FOUNDATION	$2,500
PREGNANCY JUSTICE	$2,500
COALITION FOR SOUTHERN EQUALITY	$2,000
NATIONAL DANCE INSTITUTE	$2,000
LEADING FOR CHILDREN	$2,000
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY	$2,000
BANK STREET COLLEGE	$1,500
NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE	$1,500
OUR JOURNEY	$1,500
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW	$1,500

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY19–25, $50k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 86% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

84%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$670k · 62 repeat orgs$127k to everyone else

62 repeat relationships: 44 still active in FY2025, 18 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$670k

$119k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+13%

Still filing today

66%

68%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EducationHuman ServicesArts & CultureHealthCivil RightsPhilanthropyOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

TL
THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY
3× · 2022–2024 · $150k · revenue +25%
NY
NEW YORK STUDIO SCHOOL
6× · 2019–2025 · $66k · revenue +40%
ND
NATIONAL DANCE INSTITUTE
6× · 2019–2025 · $12k · revenue +28%

Funded once

BANK STREET COLLEGE OF EDUCATIONgraduated
one grant, 2019 · $35k · revenue +33%
CC
CHARLOTTE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOLgraduated
one grant, 2019 · $27k · revenue +29%
HC
HARLEM CHILDREN'S ZONE INC
one grant, 2019 · $22k · revenue -31%

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

New York School of Interior Design

New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…

Education

Manhattanville University

To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.

Education

University of New Haven

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…

Education

School in the Square Public Charter School

School in the square ("s2") engages, educates and empowers adolescents to respond mindfully and creatively to life's opportunities and challenges. s2 is a place where students, families and educators are seen, heard, and inspired and where…

Education

Fordham University

Fordham university, the jesuit university of new york, is committed to the discovery of wisdom and the transmission of learning, through research and through education of the highest quality. for more information, see schedule o.

Education

Lehigh University

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…

Education

Albright College

As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.

Education

Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

—

United States Naval Institute

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.

—

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research Inc

The manhattan institute is a community of scholars, journalists, activists, and civic leaders dedicated to advancing opportunity, individual liberty, and the rule of law in america and its great cities.

Public Benefit

New York Hall of Science

Nysci's mission is to nurture generations of passionate learners, critical thinkers, and active citizens through design make play - an approach to learning and engagement that is deeply rooted in research on stem learning and guides the…

Arts & Culture

Sarah Lawrence College

At sarah lawrence college, our mission is to graduate citizens of the world who are diverse in every definition of the word, who take intellectual and creative risks, and who are able to focus exceptional intellectual discipline (continued…

Education

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New Visions for Public Schools Inc; the most unlike its peers is American Museum of Natural History. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

64 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 64 of the 94 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

63/64

Grantees still filing

41/64

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$402,880Crime & Legal$158,000Education$96,950Human Services$50,024Health$38,870Civil Rights$27,650Arts & Culture$23,450

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

The New York Community TrustNY16.2× affinity6 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The New York Community Trust · The Chicago Community Trust · Jewish Communal Fund · Fidelity Foundation · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Lazard Charitable Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Rocking Chair Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Rocking Chair Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

7get no government money at all

19report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–50%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Rocking Chair’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home