· Private foundation
Sander Foundation
Its FY2023 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
96% of Sander Foundation’s FY2023 grant dollars went to Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2023 names 3 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year Sander Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 10 organizations, $99k. 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k8 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $85k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HELPUSADOPTORG | $25,000 |
| GREAT CIRCLE | $20,000 |
| ST LOUIS ZOO ASSOCIATION | $20,000 |
| VARIETY-THE CHILDRENS CHARITY | $10,000 |
| KENTUCKY TORNATO RELIEF FUND | $10,000 |
| WORLD CUP DREAMS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| ACCOUNTABILITY FOR LIFE | $2,500 |
| CENTRAL INSTITUTE FOR THE DEAF | $2,500 |
| HAVEN HOUSE ST LOUIS | $2,500 |
| ST ANDREWS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| JOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOL | $250 |
| AMERICAN PARKINSONS DISEASE ASSN | $110 |
| ST LOUIS THETA NOT FOR PROFIT CORP | $100 |
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 (FY17–22, $56k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 95% 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.
92 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2022, 86 since wound down; 9 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, 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, 20% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $60k 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
- DDDONALD DANFORTH PLANT SCIENCE CENTER5× · 2017–2021 · $295k · revenue +2%
- LFLift for Life Gym Inc5× · 2017–2023 · $116k · revenue +52%
- MTMUNICIPAL THEATRE ASSOCIATION OF ST LOUIS2× · 2017–2018 · $101k · revenue +95%
Funded once
- ACAUDUBON CORKSCREW SWAMP SANCTUARYone grant, 2021 · $50k
- MFMAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF SOUTHERN FLORIDA INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $12k · revenue +53%
- SLSAINT LOUIS MUNICIPAL OPERAone grant, 2019 · $10k
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 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.
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
Sfn's mission is to: 1. advance the understanding of the brain and the nervous system by bringing together scientists of all segments of neuroscience, by facilitating the integration of research directed at all levels of biological…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
To promote public health, safety, and welfare through the improvement of the quality and quantity of drinking water and the development and furtherance of understanding of the problems relating thereto.
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
At the internet society foundation, we focus on funding initiatives that strengthen the internet in function and reach so that it can effectively serve all people. our work advances the vision of the internet society (isoc): the internet…
The foundation cultivates generosity by taking action on the greatest civic, social, and economic needs partnering with nonprofits, facilitating grantmaking, driving research and advocacy, and providing services to donors seeking to make a…
To improve, maintain and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Missouri and Kansas and the most unlike its peers is Brotherhood Ride 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 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
128 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. 128 of the 194 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 FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds DONALD DANFORTH PLANT SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds GREAT CIRCLE ↗
- Who funds Lift for Life Gym Inc ↗
- Who funds MUNICIPAL THEATRE ASSOCIATION OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds VARIETY THE CHILDRENS CHARITY OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds SHERWOOD FOREST CAMP INC ↗
- Who funds HELPUSADOPTORG INC ↗
- Who funds LIFT FOR LIFE ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL INSTITUTE FOR THE DEAF ↗
- Who funds THE SAINT LOUIS ZOO ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS LEARNING DISABILITIES ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS ARC INC ↗
- Who funds ST ANDREWS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF SOUTHERN FLORIDA INC ↗
- Who funds WINGS OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds AIM HIGH ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds WICKED GOOD CAUSE ORGANIZATION INC ↗
- Who funds SUNSHINE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER ST LOUIS INC ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BOARD OF TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds FRANKLIN & MARSHALL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WORLD CUP DREAMS FOUNDATION FKA SFI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GIVABLE ↗
- Who funds FOCUS MARINES FOUNDATION ↗
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: St Louis Community Foundation Inc · Employees Community Fund of the Boeing Company · St Louis Community Foundation · Moneta Group Charitable Foundation · Edward Jones Foundation · Youthbridge Community Foundation · United Way of Greater St Louis Inc · Pott Foundation · World Wide Technology Foundation · Centene Foundation · Hermann Family Foundation · The Lilly Christy Busch Hermann 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 Sander 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation — 4% of income from government
- Sea Turtle Conservancy — 1% of income from government
- Fish & Wildlife Foundation of Florida I — 1% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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 Sander Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sander 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.