· Private foundation
The Big Wood 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 65 grants below total $425,850 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $542,350 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $116,500 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k54 grants · $117k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $106k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $203k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WEILL CORNELL MEDICAL COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| FRIENDS WITHOUT A BORDER | $52,500 |
| METROPOLITAIN OPERA | $50,000 |
| LEE PESKY LEARNING CENTER | $35,000 |
| WASHINGTON VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT | $11,000 |
| KCRW | $10,000 |
| GOD'S LOVE WE DELIVER | $10,000 |
| METROPOLITAIN MUSEUM OF ART | $10,000 |
| PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE LA PHIL | $10,000 |
| TIDES FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CAST | $5,500 |
| STERN CENTER FOR LEARNING AND LANGUAGE | $5,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $5,000 |
| ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY | $5,000 |
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 (FY19–20, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 23%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 80% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-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.
87 repeat relationships — 49 still active in FY2024, 38 since wound down; 15 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $43k 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
- FWFRIENDS WITHOUT A BORDER6× · 2019–2024 · $367k · revenue +22%
- TWTHE WILLOWS COMMUNITY SCHOOL6× · 2019–2024 · $48k · revenue +19%
PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION INC3× · 2022–2024 · $45k · revenue +67%
Funded once
- RHREPRODUCTIVE HEALTH SERVICES, PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF ST. LOUISone grant, 2022 · $55k
- IFINDEPENDENT FEATURE PROJECT INCone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +8%
- NPNY PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITALone grant, 2020 · $25k
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 museum of the city of new york fosters understanding of the distinctive nature of urban life in the world's most influential metropolis. it engages visitors by celebrating, documenting, and interpreting the city's past, present, and…
Wp theater is the nation's oldest and largest theater company dedicated to developing, producing, and promoting the work of women+ at every stage of their careers. for over four decades we have served as leaders of a global movement…
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
Producing and developing plays and musicals.
The mission of the organization is to foster the development of creative individuals as writers and artists and to promote public appreciation of excellence in the literary and graphic arts by publishing a magazine containing fiction,…
The new group is an artist-driven company with a commitment to developing and producing powerful, contemporary theater. while constantly evolving, we maintain an ensemble approach to all our work and an articulated style of emotional…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
The mission of new york city center is to be new york city's leading center for dance and musical theater. dedicated to making the arts accessible to the broadest possible audience, city center seeks to create a welcoming environment and…
The architectural league of new york supports critically transformative work in the allied fields that shape the built environment. as a vital, independent forum, the league stimulates thinking, debate, and action on today's (continued on…
The new york studio school is committed to giving a significant education to the aspiring artist, a preamble to a lifetime's engagement in drawing, painting, and sculpture. (see schedule o for continuation)
A center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists since 1977, which continues to be a place of experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New York Cares Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Dartmouth 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 38 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
104 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. 104 of the 172 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 FRIENDS WITHOUT A BORDER ↗
- Who funds TEAM RUBICON INC ↗
- Who funds LEE PESKY LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENT FEATURE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds THE WILLOWS COMMUNITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VERA INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds Museum of Modern Art ↗
- Who funds LOUIS AUGUST JONAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN HOSPITAL OF PARIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE DENAN PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds PAROLE PREPARATION PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds ST ANN'S WAREHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds The Civilians Inc ↗
- Who funds Fred Dolan Art Academy Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE TAFT SCHOOL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE ACTORS' FUND OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds MANHATTAN THEATRE CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds Washington Volunteer Fire Dept 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: The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · The Kestrel Foundation · Coleman Family Charitable Foundation · The Wenden Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · The New York Community Trust · Open Society Institute · California Community Foundation · The Block Grausman Fund · Rene Bloch Foundation · Shaftel Family Foundation Inc · Murray & Susan Haber Charitable 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 Big Wood 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.
- Stern Center for Language and Learning — 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 The Big Wood Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Big Wood 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.