How much does Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation give?

Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation reported 19 grants totaling $16,474 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 18 and 20 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2018 to FY2025, its largest causes are Arts & Culture (26%), Human Services (11%), Education (10%).

Who are Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2018 to FY2025: Fair Field Productions ($14k), The Olana Partnership ($12k), Operation Unite New York Inc ($11k).

Does Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 33% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include American Endowment Foundation, Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc, Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program.

Where is Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation based?

Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation is based in IL.

Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation

Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$16k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$2k

Largest

01What it funds

0198% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2018 to 2025.

Arts & Culture$34kHuman Services$15kEducation$12kYouth Development$12kCivil Rights$9kEnvironment$8kFood & Nutrition$7kReligion$6kOther$0

02FY2025 · 19 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$1,000

Median grant

States reached

$295k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
OPERATION UNITE NEW YORK INC	$1,795
OLANA PARTNERSHIP	$1,500
THE NARAYA CULTURAL PRESERVATION	$1,295
FAIRFIELD CARES INC	$1,098
SUSTAINABLE IOWA LAND TRUST	$1,098
PATIENT ACCESS NETWORK FOUNDATION	$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
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION	$500
FRIENDS OF MOULTONBOROUGH PUBLIC	$500
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC	$495

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its 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. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

88%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$115k · 26 repeat orgs$15k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +43% since the first grant, against 0% for those 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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$115k

$12k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+43%

Still filing today

69%

50%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EnvironmentInternationalEducationHuman ServicesCommunity ImprovementYouth DevelopmentOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

TO
THE OLANA PARTNERSHIP
8× · 2018–2025 · $12k · revenue +43%
OU
OPERATION UNITE NEW YORK INC
8× · 2018–2025 · $11k · revenue +102%
FH
FISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION INC
6× · 2018–2025 · $10k · revenue +30%

Funded once

AN
American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches
one grant, 2024 · $3k · revenue +3%
FF
FOUNDATION FOR FREE FLIGHT
one grant, 2019 · $2k · revenue -17%
BP
BEYOND PESTICIDES
one grant, 2024 · $1k

How this is measured

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

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Rainforest Trust

Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.

International

The Montana Land Reliance

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.

Environment

Amazon Conservation Association

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…

Environment

Food & Water Watch

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…

Food & Nutrition

American Flood Coalition Inc

To drive transformational adaptation to protect communities across the country from higher seas, stronger storms, and more frequent flooding.

Environment

Foreign Policy Research Institute

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…

International

Connecticut Farmland Trust Inc

Protect Connecticuts farmland for agricultural use by purchasing and accepting donations of agricultural conservation easements

Food & Nutrition

The Water Research Foundation

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…

Environment

The Union of Concerned Scientists Inc

The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.

International

Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

—

Fsc I&P

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.…

Philanthropy

Center for Arms Control and

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.

International

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Resist Inc; 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.

04the grantee network

26 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 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.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

26/26

Grantees still filing

17/26

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$72,022Education$13,521Community Improvement$12,353Youth Development$10,575Environment$10,352Food & Nutrition$6,079Human Services$5,377

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

American Endowment FoundationOH10× affinity7 shared granteesties to 10 of 10Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Sterling Fund and Fellowship Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

1get no government money at all

7report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

05Through Plinth

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.

Play a game based on Sterling Fund and Fellowship’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home