· Private foundation
Stiefel Freethought 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $85k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $310k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RELIGION NEWS LLC | $100,000 |
| FISCAL SPONSORSHIP ALLIES INC | $100,000 |
| PUBLIC CONCERN FOUNDATION INC | $60,000 |
| PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| DISARMING LEVIATHAN MINISTRIES INC | $35,000 |
| CENTER FOR INQUIRY INC | $20,250 |
| ATHEISTS UNITED | $20,000 |
| AMERICAN VALUES PROJECT | $10,000 |
| AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH & STATE | $5,000 |
| TRIANGLE FREETHOUGHT SOCIETY | $1,000 |
| COMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN ASSOC FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE | $1,000 |
| FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION INC | $1,000 |
| MILITARY RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOUNDATION INC | $1,000 |
| BLACK NONBELIEVERS | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $41k) land where the poverty rate runs at 4%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +6% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 22 since wound down; 2 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $120k 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
- AUAMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE9× · 2017–2025 · $367k · revenue +103%
- RNRELIGION NEWS FOUNDATION2× · 2022–2023 · $200k · revenue +258%
- CCCOMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND8× · 2018–2025 · $136k · revenue +187%
Funded once
- WMWORLD MENTAL HEALTH COALITIONone grant, 2021 · $100k
- EMEMERGENCY MEDICINE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue -9%
- TFTHE FILM COLLABORATIVE INCone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue 0%
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.
To increase the visibility and respect for nontheistic viewpoints in the United States and to protect and strengthen the secular character of our government.
The american enterprise institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. aei pursues these ideals through independent thinking and the…
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. Pew Research Center generates a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue and…
The american political science association ("apsa") supports excellence in scholarship and teaching and informed discourse about politics, policy, and civic participation. the association promotes a lively, diverse community of scholars,…
The American Academy of Sciences and Letters (AASL) promotes scholarship and honors outstanding achievement in the arts, sciences, and learned professions. It encourages the fruitful exchange of ideas within academia and society at large…
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
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.
A national non partisan public policy forum to illuminate issues of public policy.
The center for freethought equality (cfe) is a sister organization of the american humanist association (aha) dedicated to lobbying and political advocacy. cfe will significantly increase humanist activity in key washington coalitions, and…
American foreign service association (afsa) is both the principal advocate for the long-term institutional wellbeing of the professional career foreign service and responsible for safeguarding the interest of afsa members. (continued on…
To advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects, through archeological, biological, ethnological, and linguistic research; and to further the professional interest of american anthropologist, including the…
Preservation of civil liberties through advocacy and lobbying.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the most unlike its peers is Camp Quest Inc. 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 25 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) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
42 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. 42 of the 53 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 CENTER FOR INQUIRY INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC CONCERN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RELIGION NEWS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMON CAUSE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Secular Coalition for America Education Fund ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Thomas Paine Memorial Association Inc ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC RELIGION RESEARCH INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds EMERGENCY MEDICINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FISCAL SPONSORSHIP ALLIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE FILM COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds EX-MUSLIMS OF NORTH AMERICA ↗
- Who funds SECULAR STUDENT ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds BLACK NONBELIEVERS ↗
- Who funds Atheists United ↗
- Who funds MILITARY RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP QUEST INC ↗
- Who funds PANORAMA GLOBAL ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ATHEISTS INC ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE ↗
- Who funds GO HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds National Center for Science Education ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds The Harry Bridges Project ↗
- Who funds School for Conversion Inc ↗
- Who funds Hispanic American Freethinkers 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: Johnson James Hervey Char Ed Trust · Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc · Charter Charitable Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Shell USA Company Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund
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 Stiefel Freethought 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.
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.