· Private foundation
Sahara 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k22 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $11k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $10,850 |
| KINDY ACADEMY | $8,800 |
| BRIGHT FUTURES | $7,840 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| ONE UMMAH FOUNDATION | $1,500 |
| MASJID DARUS SALAAM (ISONET) | $1,200 |
| ICNA | $1,100 |
| ISLAMIC RELIEF | $1,060 |
| ICO | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| HUMAN DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| AL-MAQASID | $1,000 |
| ZAKAT FOUNDATION INDIA | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| AHAT | $700 |
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 (FY20–24, $100k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 1% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 5% of Sahara Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +36% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 14 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, 41% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $27k 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
- IRISLAMIC RELIEF USA4× · 2020–2024 · $4k · revenue +34%
- UMUnited Mission For Relief & Development2× · 2020–2021 · $2k · revenue +267%
- TZTHE ZAKAT FOUNDATION OF AMERICA3× · 2020–2023 · $1k · revenue +162%
Funded once
- IIMRCone grant, 2021 · $37k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $3k
- HHHELPING HANDS INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $1k · revenue +99%
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.
Provide help to people who are victims of natural disasters or conflicts or suffering from poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, discrimination, homelessness, debt, unemployment, injustice, or lack of skills or economic opportunity.
Zakat, aid and charity assisting humanity (zacah) is a minnesota-based grassroots organization dedicated to the collection and re-distribution of wealth, including zakat (mandatory charitable tax for all muslims) and sadaqah (any…
Develop long-term developmental projects aimed at providing a sustainable living for poor communities as well as supporting needy widows and orphans
To provide material and financial assistance to relieve the sufferings of any and all persons affected by disasters. conflicts, disease. and hunger, irrespective of race. creed or ethnicity. To support schools and other learning centers…
Human Rights Project
The foundation is a private organization whose mission is to support the poor and needy in marginalized communities working for their rights, to provide children with access to education, and to provide the poor with access to basic health…
Islamic education and worship
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mercy-Usa for Aid & Developmentinc and the most unlike its peers is For the Needy & Hungry Foundation Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 20 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 79 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 Indian Muslim Relief and Charities ↗
- Who funds KINDI ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds ISLAMIC RELIEF USA ↗
- Who funds THE SEED ↗
- Who funds United Mission For Relief & Development ↗
- Who funds HELPING HANDS INC ↗
- Who funds THE ZAKAT FOUNDATION OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Indian American Muslim Council ↗
- Who funds A CONTINUOUS CHARITY ↗
- Who funds MERCY-USA FOR AID & DEVELOPMENTINC ↗
- Who funds Mercy Without Limits ↗
- Who funds PURE HANDS INC ↗
- Who funds Isaad foundation ↗
- Who funds United Hands Relief Inc ↗
- Who funds AMOUD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSAL ACADEMY OF FLORIDA INC ↗
- Who funds FMS WELFARE TRUST ↗
- Who funds ISLAMIC ACADEMY OF KENDALLVILL ↗
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: American Muslim Community Foundation · Amin & Rubina Chikhalia Foundation · The Tabbaa Foundation · Analog Devices Foundation · Nakadar Foundation · The Syed Foundation · Verizon Foundation · Bright Funds Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · Ansaar USA for Relief and Development · Sattar Family Foundation · Sidra 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 Sahara 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.
- Universal Academy of Florida Inc — 10% 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.