· Public charity
Center for Empowered Politics
Cep specializes in people of color-led grassroots movement building 501(c)(4) organizations taht have been on the cutting edge of c3/c4 innovations, engagement in ethnic communities, campaign consultation, and integrated voter engagement 2.0.
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.
The 26 grants below total $1,421,006 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,645,656 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $224,650 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 $10k5 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $358k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $425k
- $250k+1 grant · $600k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RISING VOICES ACTION FUND | $599,969 |
| ONE APIA NEVADA | $140,000 |
| ASIAN PACIFIC ISLANDER POLITICAL ALLIANCE | $120,000 |
| NCAAT IN ACTION | $115,000 |
| ASIAN AMERICAN ADVOCACY FUND | $50,000 |
| MISSISSIPPI VOTES ACTION FUND | $42,500 |
| AZ ASIAN AMERICAN NATIVE HAWAIIAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER ADVOCATES | $40,000 |
| SILICON VALLEY RISING ACTION | $37,500 |
| OUR FUTURE IS BLACK PAC | $27,687 |
| FORCE FOR CHANGE | $26,850 |
| ELLA BAKER CENTER ACTION FUND | $20,500 |
| DRUM BEATS | $20,000 |
| EAST BAY ACTION | $20,000 |
| ASIAN AMERICAN MIDWEST PROGRESSIVES | $20,000 |
| CHINESE PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTION | $20,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $372k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 30% 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.
10 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 2 since wound down; 17 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, 27% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.0M 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
- NINCAAT IN ACTION2× · 2022–2024 · $165k · revenue +212%
- YWYOUNG WOMEN'S FREEDOM CENTER3× · 2020–2024 · $94k · revenue +149%
- BCBVM CAPACITY BUILDING INSTITUTE INC2× · 2020–2024 · $23k · revenue +11%
Funded once
CHINESE PROGRESSIVE ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $155k · revenue +236%- MAMICHIGAN ACTIONone grant, 2022 · $115k
- AHALL HANDS ON DECK NETWORK INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $75k · revenue ×20
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.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta's mission is to protect and promote the civil and human rights of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in Georgia and the Southeast through policy advocacy, legal services,…
Asians for Collective Action (ACA) harnesses the strenghts of Asians and Asian Americans to drive systemic change to create a just, healthy, and thriving community for all.
The Asian Law Caucus's mission is to promote, advance, and represent the legal and civil rights of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, recognizing that social, economic, political and racial inequalities continue to exist…
It is the mission of APIAVote to encourage and promote civic participation of Asian Pacific Islander Americans in the electoral and public processes at the national, state, and local levels. APIAVote also aims to educate and inform Asian…
APEN Action is dedicated to the education, advocacy and mobilization of voters in the Asian Pacific Islander community toward environmental, social and economic justice for all.
Black in Action Collective exists to build Black political power to transform systems and radically reimagine what is possible for ourselves, our families, and our communities
Asian Immigrant Women Advocates empowers low-income, limited English speaking immigrant women and youth through education, leadership development and civic participation programs.
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…
Colorado people's action (cpa) is a member-driven, racial justice organization dedicated to winning long-lasting progressive public policies in colorado. cpa builds power by mobilizing voters, electing our own people to office, holding…
Aapi equity alliance is a coalition of community-based organizations that advocates for the rights and needs of the asian and pacific islander (api) community in the greater los angeles area, with particular focus on low-income, immigrant,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ella Baker Center Action Fund and the most unlike its peers is St James Infirmary. 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 12 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) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
64 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. 64 of the 78 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 NCAAT IN ACTION ↗
- Who funds CHINESE PROGRESSIVE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ASIAN AMERICAN ADVOCACY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ONE APIA NEVADA ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA WINS ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN'S FREEDOM CENTER ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ALL HANDS ON DECK NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds Chinese for Affirmative Action ↗
- Who funds CHINESE PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds ASIAN AMERICAN MIDWEST PROGRESSIVES ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CIVIC ACTION ↗
- Who funds NAKASEC ACTION FUND ↗
- Who funds DRUM Desis Rising Up and Moving Inc ↗
- Who funds Chicago NORML ↗
- Who funds Asian Pacific Environmental Network ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI VOTES ACTION FUND CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds ONE ARIZONA ↗
- Who funds Silicon Valley Rising Action ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA RISING TOGETHER INC ↗
- Who funds SIXTEEN THIRTY FUND ↗
- Who funds Data For Black Lives Inc ↗
- Who funds Communities for A New California ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR EMPOWERED POLITICS ↗
- Who funds POWERCA ACTION FKA MOBILIZE THE IMMIGRANT VOTE ACTION ↗
- Who funds JAKARA MOVEMENT ↗
- Who funds ST JAMES INFIRMARY ↗
- Who funds BVM CAPACITY BUILDING INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds PILIPINO WORKERS CENTER OF SOUTHERN ↗
- Who funds ELLA BAKER CENTER ACTION FUND ↗
- Who funds EAST BAY ACTION ↗
- Who funds DRUM BEATS ↗
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 Advocacy · Tides Foundation · Open Society Action Fund Inc · Sixteen Thirty Fund · All Hands on Deck Network Inc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · New Venture Fund · NEO Philanthropy Action Fund Inc · America Votes · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Chinese Progressive Association · Organize Action
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 Center for Empowered Politics 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.
- Salvation and Social Justice a Nj N — 52% 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 Center for Empowered Politics?
Find your warmest path to Center for Empowered Politics 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.