· Private foundation
Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OPERATION UNITE NEW YORK INC | $1,795 |
| OLANA PARTNERSHIP | $1,500 |
| THE NARAYA CULTURAL PRESERVATION | $1,295 |
| PATIENT ACCESS NETWORK FOUNDATION | $1,098 |
| SUSTAINABLE IOWA LAND TRUST | $1,098 |
| FAIRFIELD CARES INC | $1,098 |
| LAKES REGION FOOD PANTRY | $1,095 |
| ALASKA WILDNESS LEAGUE | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE | $1,000 |
| FISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION INC | $1,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS USA INC | $800 |
| FRIENDS OF MOULTONBOROUGH PUBLIC | $500 |
| UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION | $500 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC | $495 |
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 (FY18–25, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% 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.
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 +65% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- TOTHE OLANA PARTNERSHIP8× · 2018–2025 · $12k · revenue +87%
- OUOPERATION UNITE NEW YORK INC8× · 2018–2025 · $11k · revenue +102%
- FHFISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION INC6× · 2018–2025 · $10k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesone grant, 2024 · $3k · revenue +3%
- FFFOUNDATION FOR FREE FLIGHTone grant, 2019 · $2k · revenue -17%
- BPBEYOND PESTICIDESone grant, 2024 · $1k
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
The mission of the montana land reliance (mlr) is to partner with landowners to provide permanent protection for private lands that are significant for agricultural production, fish and wildlife habitat, and open space.
Amazon conservation unites science, people, and innovation to protect the amazon - the greatest wild forest on earth. as guardians of the most iconic forest on the planet, we bring together the power of the latest science and technology…
Food & water watch conducts extensive research and public education to ensure the food and water we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced. so we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of…
To drive transformational adaptation to protect communities across the country from higher seas, stronger storms, and more frequent flooding.
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
Protect Connecticuts farmland for agricultural use by purchasing and accepting donations of agricultural conservation easements
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…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Fsc i&p promotes environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests. this mission aligns with the forest stewardship council (fsc), its network of offices, and other organizations.…
A nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to enhancing international peace and security in the 21st century, thereby retaining its focus on nuclear weapons but expanding to include other present emerging security threats.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Resist Inc and the most unlike its peers is International Rescue Committee 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 37 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 — 0.0% 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.
26 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 26 of the 40 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 THE OLANA PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds OPERATION UNITE NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds FISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LAKES REGION FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE BROOKLYN COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds ALASKA WILDERNESS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds MILTON ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds THE STARTING POINT INC OF NEW JERSEY ↗
- Who funds Loon Preservation Committee ↗
- Who funds COLUMBIA LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE IOWA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR FREE FLIGHT ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR SHAMANIC STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds Lwala Community Alliance ↗
- Who funds PATIENT ACCESS NETWORK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Sawhorse Revolution ↗
- Who funds RESIST INC ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds Jefferson County Farmers and Neighbors ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds BIKES NOT BOMBS INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Third World Organizing ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
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 Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Network for Good · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Sterling Fund and Fellowship 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.
- Bikes Not Bombs Inc — 2% of income from government
- Resist Inc — 2% of income from government
- Milton Academy — 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 Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sterling Fund and Fellowship 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.