· Public charity
Smithsonian Institution
*increase and diffusion of knowledge* is the mission set forth by james smithson.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 13 grants below total $589,378 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $18,009,379 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $17,420,001 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $137k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $438k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HARVARD COLLEGE PRESIDENT & FACULTY | $109,590 |
| TUSKEGEE UNIVERSITY | $73,950 |
| TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY | $63,700 |
| FLORIDA A&M UNIVERSITY | $63,700 |
| JACKSON STATE UNIVERSITY | $63,700 |
| CLARK ATLANTA UNIVERSITY INC | $63,700 |
| RUTGERS UNIVERSITY | $46,393 |
| SALISBURY UNIVERSITY | $42,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN FRANCISCO | $27,500 |
| CHAMPAIGN COUNTY FOREST PRESERVE | $11,250 |
| THE AMISTAD RESEARCH CENTER | $10,250 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND AT COLLEGE PARK | $8,545 |
| APOLLO THEATRE FOUNDATION INC | $5,100 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 70% of your 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
Grants abroad, by region — $3.6M on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 8 regions, all to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT STIPENDS
Stated purpose: ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT STIPENDS
Stated purpose: ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT STIPENDS
Stated purpose: ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT STIPENDS
Stated purpose: ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT STIPENDS
Stated purpose: ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT STIPENDS
Stated purpose: ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT STIPENDS
Stated purpose: ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT STIPENDS
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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.
16 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 3 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $68k 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
- TUTuskegee University4× · 2017–2024 · $155k · revenue +46%
- FUFISK UNIVERSITY2× · 2022–2023 · $35k · revenue +5%
- BUBETHUNE-COOKMAN UNIVERSITY2× · 2019–2022 · $29k · revenue +6%
Funded once
- NYNew York Universitygraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +45%
- EGELIZABETH GRACE VEATCH LLCone grant, 2023 · $60k
- KAKANSAS ATHLETICS INCone grant, 2023 · $55k
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.
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…
Case Western Reserve University is an independent, research-oriented university with broadly based strengths in health, including medicine, nursing and dentistry; in engineering; in the arts and sciences; and in law, management and social…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
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…
Ceu is committed to promoting the values of open society and self-reflective critical thinking. it aims at excellence in the mastery of established knowledge, courage to pursue the creation of new knowledge in the humanities, the social…
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 and Research
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The washington university is a co-educational, nondenominational university with a long and distinguished history of teaching, research and (cont'd on schedule o)
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The George Washington University and the most unlike its peers is Ohio State University Research Foundation. 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 63 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 64 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 President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds Tuskegee University ↗
- Who funds Clark Atlanta University Inc ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds FISK UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds QUEENS COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Yale University ↗
- Who funds BETHUNE-COOKMAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds APOLLO THEATER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WEST AFRICAN RESEARCH ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE WHITNEY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
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: National Academy of Sciences · North Carolina High School Athletic Association Inc · National Collegiate Athletic Association · Share Our Strength · Tulsa Community Foundation · Folds of Honor Foundation · Foundation for the Carolinas · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Smithsonian Institution 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.
- West African Research Association — 13% of income from government
- Yale University — 12% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Bethune-Cookman University — 6% of income from government
- Historical Association of Southern Florida Inc — 2% 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.