· Public charity
Telescope Fund
TELESCOPE FUND partners with donors to expand their philanthropic giving by providing them with the tools to catalyze their vision for change and supporting strategic grantmaking, efficient operations, expert advising, and innovative problem solving.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2022–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $129k
- $50k–250k17 grants · $2.2M
- $250k+9 grants · $7.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE RECYCLING PARTNERSHIP INC | $2,200,000 |
| SUPERHUMANS UKRAINE INC | $1,000,000 |
| DREAMING OUT LOUD INC | $1,000,000 |
| SAVE UKRAINE INC | $1,000,000 |
| FEED THE CHILDREN | $700,000 |
| FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION INC | $680,000 |
| DIONS CHICAGO DREAM INC NFP | $600,000 |
| ARBOR DAY FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND | $266,046 |
| GLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION | $237,000 |
| GAMES FOR CHANGE INC | $200,000 |
| CAL RIPKEN SR FOUNDATION INC | $200,000 |
| IMAGINE NORTH CAROLINA FIRST | $152,437 |
| ISAIAH | $152,436 |
| PENNSYLVANIA VOICE | $150,000 |
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 (FY22–24, $9.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 52% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
50 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 38 since wound down; 20 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, 43% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5.6M 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
ALLIANCE FOR YOUTH ORGANIZING2× · 2022–2023 · $2.3M · revenue +12%- TRTHE RECYCLING PARTNERSHIP INC2× · 2023–2024 · $2.2M · revenue +11%
- TOTHE OHIO ORGANIZING COLLABORATIVE2× · 2022–2023 · $2.1M · revenue +59%
Funded once
BLUEPRINT NORTH CAROLINAone grant, 2022 · $1.1M · revenue -61%- MWMUSIC WILL INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $750k · revenue +31%
- FFFOUNDATION FOR THE MID SOUTH INCone grant, 2022 · $750k · revenue -56% · 47% of their budget
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.
The organization's mission is to leverage web-technologies to improve civic engagement and voter education.
Colorofchange.org works to strengthen the voice of black americans and increase the level of accountability and responsiveness of elected officials to underrepresented black constituencies using the internet as a lobbying and…
Bold Impact is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting a democracy where all communities get to thrive.
See schedule o.this organization seeks to build collective power to defend and advance a vibrant democracy that benefits all people.
Fund for Justice is a nationally connected social impact research and advocacy organization that works to achieve fundamental, systemic reform by addressing policies and practicies that prevent individuals from reaching their full…
Alliance for justice builds the strength of progressive movements by training and educating nonprofit organizations on advocacy, while harnessing their collective power to transform our state and federal courts.
The mission of voteamerica is to strengthen united states democracy by increasing voter turnout.
Common future is a network of pioneering leaders across the u.s. and canada who work deeply within their communities to create alternative approaches to business, philanthropy, and investing. we envision an economy that has transitioned…
Fair democracy works to ensure that the roots of american democracy are healthy with strong voting rights and access, an engaged and informed electorate, an open and accountable government and trusted messengers engaging americans in civil…
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
The nonpartisan campaign legal center advances democracy through law at the federal, state and local levels, fighting for every american's rights to responsive government and a fair opportunity to participate in and affect the democratic…
Civictn and its partners are working individually and collectively to create a more accessible, inclusive, and representative democracy by lifting up the voices of the disenfranchised, restoring the power and accessibility of the vote, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Progress Florida Education Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Clark County Museum. 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 15 years old; the field is 16. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 6% 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.
103 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. 103 of the 110 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 ONE ARIZONA ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA RISING TOGETHER INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR YOUTH ORGANIZING ↗
- Who funds THE RECYCLING PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds THE OHIO ORGANIZING COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA VOICE ↗
- Who funds TEXAS FREEDOM NETWORK EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds PROGEORGIA STATE TABLE INC ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds ALABAMA FORWARD ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CIVIC POLICY ↗
- Who funds IMAGINE NORTH CAROLINA FIRST ↗
- Who funds ISAIAH ↗
- Who funds We the People MI ↗
- Who funds TEXAS ORGANIZING PROJECT EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds NEW GEORGIA PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds ASIAN AMERICANS ADVANCING JUSTICE ATLANTA INC ↗
- Who funds BLUEPRINT NORTH CAROLINA ↗
- Who funds PROMOTE THE VOTE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN FLORIDA INC ↗
- Who funds WE ARE DOWN HOME ↗
- Who funds DREAMING OUT LOUD INC ↗
- Who funds SAVE UKRAINE INC ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI VOTES ↗
- Who funds SUPERHUMANS UKRAINE INC ↗
- Who funds ACTIVATE 48 EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Democracy North Carolina ↗
- Who funds THE OLE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA RIGHTS RESTORATION COALITION ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA CENTER FOR EMPOWERMENT ↗
- Who funds CAL RIPKEN SR FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LAW FORWARD INC ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds TAKEACTION MN EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds STATE VOICES ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM INC ↗
- Who funds PROGRESSIVE LEADERSHIP ALLIANCE OF NEVADA ↗
- Who funds VOICE OF THE EXPERIENCED VOTE ↗
- Who funds VIRGINIA NEW MAJORITY EDUCATION FUND ↗
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: NEO Philanthropy Inc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · New Venture Fund · Tides Foundation · Windward Fund · Way to Rise · Hopewell Fund · Marguerite Casey Foundation · The Ford Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Rockefeller Family Fund Inc · Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation Incorporated
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 Telescope Fund 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.
- Cal Ripken Sr Foundation Inc — 12% of income from government
- Preeclampsia Foundation Inc — 9% of income from government
- Feed the Children Inc — 1% 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 Telescope Fund?
Find your warmest path to Telescope Fund 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.