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Plinth

· Private foundation

Shepherd Sower Sentinel and Scholar 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.

$460k
Granted FY2025still arriving
4
Grants FY2025still arriving
4
States reached
$225k
Largest
01What you fund
0169% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY20172025.

Civil Rights$1.3MEducation$760kReligion$200kOther$1.0M
02FY2025 · 4 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2025

  • $10k–50k1 grant · $35k
  • $50k–250k3 grants · $425k
$150,000
Median grant
4
States reached
$6.1M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
FOCUS ON THE FAMILY$225,000
ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM$150,000
SAMARITAN'S PURSE$50,000
AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY$35,000
02The need
03

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.

show:

Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 69% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM: $200k → 11%AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY: $50k → 22%MARINERS CHURCH: $100k → 10%BIOLA UNIVERSITY: $200k → 14%SAMARITAN'S PURSE: $50k → 21%FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: $225k → 9%ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM: $200k → 11%AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY: $35k → 22%MARINERS CHURCH: $75k → 10%BIOLA UNIVERSITY: $140k → 14%SAMARITAN'S PURSE: $40k → 21%FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: $150k → 9%ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM: $155k → 11%BIOLA UNIVERSITY: $110k → 14%SAMARITAN'S PURSE: $25k → 21%FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: $125k → 9%ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM: $150k → 11%BIOLA UNIVERSITY: $75k → 14%FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: $125k → 9%ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM: $135k → 11%BIOLA UNIVERSITY: $75k → 14%FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: $100k → 9%ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM: $125k → 11%BIOLA UNIVERSITY: $60k → 14%FOCUS ON THE FAMILY: $100k → 9%ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM: $125k → 11%BIOLA UNIVERSITY: $50k → 14%ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM: $125k → 11%BIOLA UNIVERSITY: $50k → 14%ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM: $100k → 11%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

100%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$3.3M · 6 repeat orgs$0 to everyone else

6 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

6
0

Total granted

$3.3M
$0

Still filing today

67%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

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

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
ReligionCivil RightsEducationOther

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

  • ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM
    9× · 2017–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +134%
  • BU
    BIOLA UNIVERSITY INC
    8× · 2017–2024 · $760k · revenue +15%
  • SP
    SAMARITAN'S PURSE
    3× · 2023–2025 · $115k · revenue +53%

Funded once

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

    04Your field
    04the grantee network

    4 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 4 of the 6 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.

    0
    Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
    0
    Early backer (in before they grew)
    4/4
    Grantees still filing
    3/4
    Grew since you first funded

    Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

    ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM — $1,315,000 · Civil RightsALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOMFOCUS ON THE FAMILY — $825,000 · OtherFOCUS ON THE FAMILYMARINERS CHURCH — $175,000 · OtherMARINERS CHURCHBIOLA UNIVERSITY INC — $760,000 · EducationBIOLA UNIVERSITY INCSAMARITAN'S PURSE — $115,000 · ReligionAMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY — $85,000 · Religion
    Civil Rights$1,315,000Other$1,000,000Education$760,000Religion$200,000

    Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

    25%50%75%100%grantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM — $1,315,000 over 9y, 0.4% of budgetBIOLA UNIVERSITY INC — $760,000 over 8y, 0.1% of budgetSAMARITAN'S PURSE — $115,000 over 3y, 0.0% of budgetAMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY — $85,000 over 2y, 0.1% of budget
    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 ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM
    • Who funds BIOLA UNIVERSITY INC
    • Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE
    • Who funds AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY

    Government reliance of your grantees

    Every dot is one organization Shepherd Sower Sentinel and Scholar 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.

    2024
    202122232425
    no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%your share of their income ↑0%3%5%8%10%share of the org’s income from government
      no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
      0get no government money at all
      0rely on government for over half their income
      ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–10%
      typical government reliance, FY2025

      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.

      On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 6 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

      Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

      Source object · view filing

      More from the funding graph