· Private foundation
The Alix Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
80% of The Alix Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Trustees Of The University Of Pennsylvania, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 14 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year The Alix Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 10 organizations, $30M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $207k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $643k
- $250k+2 grants · $29M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MAYO CLINIC | $25,420,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $3,500,000 |
| AMERICAN FRIENDS OF GRANGE PARK OPERA FOUNDATION | $242,603 |
| THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| TEACHERS COLLEGE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| CORAL SEA FOUNDATION | $45,000 |
| COLLEGESPRING | $30,000 |
| HOLY CROSS HIGH SCHOOL | $26,549 |
| FORGOTTEN HARVEST | $20,000 |
| NW GOLDBERG CARES | $17,000 |
| MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER | $15,000 |
| AMERICAN COLLEGE OF BANKRUPTCY FOUNDATION | $12,500 |
| MARINE TOYS FOR TOTS FOUNDATION | $11,100 |
| THE RIVER FUND NEW YORK INC | $10,000 |
| BUILDING BEDS 4 KIDS | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $54k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 45% 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.
21 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2023, 11 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100k 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
- NRNORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM AT STOCKBRIDGE INC4× · 2017–2023 · $1.3M · revenue +11%
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY3× · 2022–2024 · $600k · revenue +26%
FORGOTTEN HARVEST INC4× · 2020–2023 · $273k · revenue +2%
Funded once
- OLOL LENTILLE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $40k · revenue -37%
- HMHARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOLone grant, 2022 · $25k
- SESOCIAL & ECONOMIC ACTION FOR LEBANONINCone grant, 2020 · $21k · revenue -61%
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.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
Business leaders for michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan statewide organization driven by ceos from the state's leading employers, all working toward a shared goal: making michigan a top 10 state for jobs, talent and a thriving economy.…
Fordham university, the jesuit university of new york, is committed to the discovery of wisdom and the transmission of learning, through research and through education of the highest quality. for more information, see schedule o.
Bridging the gap between early-stage innovation and commercial application. partnering to de-risk, develop and scale-up discoveries into commercially-viable technology packages.
The Detroit Historical Society tells Detroit's stories and why they matter through its exhibits, programs, outreach, and the preservation and dissemination of its artifacts and collections.
See schedule onorc at the university of chicago conducts research and data science on critical societal issues to guide decision-making and the development of programs and public policy. our experts identify relationships and trends, and…
Delta dental fund's mission is to improve the oral health of the public and to advance dental science and the dental profession through research and education.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Council of Michigan Foundations and the most unlike its peers is Ol Lentille Foundation. 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 28 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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 56 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 MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM AT STOCKBRIDGE INC ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF GRANGE PARK OPERA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Teachers College Columbia University ↗
- Who funds FORGOTTEN HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds GLEANERS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF SOUTHEASTERN MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds DETROIT COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MARINE TOYS FOR TOTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Collegespring Inc ↗
- Who funds LIGHTHOUSE OF OAKLAND COUNTY ↗
- Who funds NW GOLDBERG CARES INC ↗
- Who funds THE EURO PEDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds JUMPSTART FOR YOUNG CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds OL LENTILLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SWEET DREAMZZZ INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN COLLEGE OF BANKRUPTCY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BLOOMFIELD HILLS SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BALDWIN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE JOHNSON NATURECENTER ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL & ECONOMIC ACTION FOR LEBANONINC ↗
- Who funds MOTOWN HISTORICAL MUSUEM INC ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN DETROIT PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds THE HONORABLE TINA BROZMAN FDTN INC ↗
- Who funds HER JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNITED NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSES OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds Cerebral Palsy Alliance Research Foundation ↗
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: Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · The Ford Foundation · United Jewish Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · United Way for Southeastern Michigan · Dte Energy Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · WK Kellogg 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 The Alix 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.
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge 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.