· Private foundation
The Calamus 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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $145k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHOSEN FAMILY CENTER | $20,000 |
| WILLIAM INSITUTE UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW | $20,000 |
| TRANSGENDER LAW PROJECT | $20,000 |
| DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES | $15,000 |
| AMERICA DIVERSA | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| INTER-INTRA COMMUNITY | $10,000 |
| QUEER YOUTH PROJECT OF CONNECTICUT | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| BLACK LGBTQ LIBERATION INC | $10,000 |
| TARAB NYC | $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 (FY19–23, $105k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +85% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 6 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, 50% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $75k 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
- PIPREP4ALL INC2× · 2021–2023 · $30k · revenue ×35 · 59% of their budget
DRIVE CHANGE INC3× · 2019–2021 · $28k · revenue +116%- QQQPLUS QUEER YOUTH PROGRAM OF CONNECTICUT2× · 2023–2024 · $20k · revenue +42%
Funded once
NEO Philanthropy Incgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $66k · revenue +58%
Transgender Law Centerone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue -17%- WWWILLIAM WAY LGBT COMMUNITY CENTERone grant, 2023 · $35k · revenue -34%
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.
Colectivo Intercultural TRANSgrediendo is a social organization, which works on the empowerment of human rights, access and comprehensive health care of TransGNB people, strengthening the social and cultural expression of diverse gender…
Our mission is to ameliorate disparities faced by transgender, gender non-binary and intersex people as well as help reduce similar disparities among our lesbian, gay and bisexual communities.
Girls for gender equity (gge) works intergenerationally, through a black feminist lens, to achieve gender and racial justice by centering the leadership of black girls and gender-expansive young people of color to reshape culture and…
The mission of translatina network is to gain equal and lasting rights for all latina transgender women at a local, state and federal level. through the effective social mobilization of our community, we will have direct involvement in…
Nytag advocates for more inclusive gender-based policies that benefit transgender and gender non-conforming/non-binary (tgncnb) individuals through building community leaders,educating practitioners, and influencing policy makers.
The national black justice coalition (nbjc) is a civil rights organization dedicated to the empowerment of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (lgbtq+) and same-gender loving (sgl) people, including people living with…
Global Philanthropy Project (GPP or the Organization) is a collaboration of funders and philanthropic advisors working to expand global philanthropic support to advance the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex…
Gate is an international advocacy organization committed to promoting justice and equality for trans and gender diverse communities.
Queer Power Alliance is rooted in the LGBTQIA+ community and in solidarity with other marginalized communities. We strive for equity by disrupting systems of oppression holding back LGBTQIA+ communities through advocating, educating,…
LGBTQ Victory Institute works to achieve and sustain equality through leadership development, trainings, research and convenings. We work around the globe to increase the number, expand the diversity, and ensure the success of out LGBTQ+…
To provide leadership and professional development, education and research to create workplaces free from discrimination.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Center for Transformative Action and the most unlike its peers is Qplus Queer Youth Program of Connecticut. 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 16 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) — 17% of your grantees by number, and just 9% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 77 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 TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds Transgender Law Center ↗
- Who funds THE ASTRAEA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Lineage Project Inc ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM WAY LGBT COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds PREP4ALL INC ↗
- Who funds DRIVE CHANGE INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN MAKE MOVIES INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICA DIVERSA INC ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds QPLUS QUEER YOUTH PROGRAM OF CONNECTICUT ↗
- Who funds SWOP BEHIND BARS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR TRANSFORMATIVE ACTION ↗
- Who funds Equality New Mexico Foundation ↗
- Who funds SADIE NASH LEADERSHIP PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds EQUALITY FOUNDATION OF GA INC ↗
- Who funds DESIGNING JUSTICE DESIGNING SPACES ↗
- Who funds Organizacion Latina Trans in Texas ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR CIVIC INNOVATION IN ↗
- Who funds BLACK AND PINK INC ↗
- Who funds TRANS HOUSING ATLANTA 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: Tides Foundation · Borealis Philanthropy · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · Proteus Fund Inc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Groundswell Fund · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · Elton John AIDS Foundation Inc · AIDS United · Ms Foundation for Women Inc · The Astraea Foundation Inc · Stonewall Community 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 Calamus 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.
- Miracle of Love Inc — 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 Calamus Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Calamus 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.