· Private foundation
The Dobson Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k15 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $203k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL MUSEUM OF RACING | $35,000 |
| YALE UNIVERSITY | $22,700 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION | $20,000 |
| CORNELL LAB OF ORINTHOLOGY | $20,000 |
| LANCASTER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $15,350 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF NYC | $10,000 |
| SEABIRD INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF LANCASTER | $10,000 |
| THE PEREGRINE FUND | $10,000 |
| FREIENDS OF SUSQUEHANA RIVER ART | $10,000 |
| ENVIORNMENTAL ADVOCATES OF NY | $10,000 |
| EARTHJUSTICE | $10,000 |
| LANCASTER CONSERVANCY | $10,000 |
| AMAZON CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION | $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 (FY20–23, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 18%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 90% 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 +43% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
64 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2025, 45 since wound down; 10 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $51k 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
- NMNATIONAL MUSEUM OF RACING INC8× · 2017–2025 · $212k · revenue +76%
- CRCoastal Rivers Conservation Trust8× · 2017–2025 · $111k · revenue +33%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF LANCASTER INC9× · 2017–2025 · $52k · revenue +37%
Funded once
- LHLancaster Historical Society Incone grant, 2020 · $36k · revenue +116%
- ANAUDUBON NEW YORKone grant, 2017 · $31k
- NMNATIONAL MUSEUM OF DANCEone grant, 2023 · $12k · revenue -63%
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.
See schedule onylcv is a non-partisan policy making and political action organization that works to make environmental protection a top priority with elected officials, decision-makers and the voters by evaluating incumbent performance and…
The wildlands trust works throughout southeastern massachusetts to conserve and permanently protect native habitats, farmland, and lands of high ecologic and scenic value that serve to keep our communities healthy and our residents…
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
See schedule onylcvef's mission is to educate, engage and empower new yorkers to be effective advocates on behalf of the environment from clean energy and funding for parks, to solid waste and green buildings. first, we educate new yorkers…
The wildlife society's mission is to inspire, empower, and enable wildlife professionals to sustain wildlife populations and habitats through science-based management and conservation.
The mission of Midcoast Conservancy is to protect vital lands and waters on a scale that matters and to inspire wonder and action on behalf of all species and the Earth.
The central new york land trust seeks to preserve and protect natural areas in order to provide our communities clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat, and a chance to connect with the land.
To protect the nature of massachusetts for people and for wildlife through education, land conservation, advocacy, scientific research, and habitat stewardship/restoration.
The mission of the atlantic coast conservancy is to provide 21st century solutions and sound scientific applications for conservation of critical natural resources in the face of a changing climate, focusing on the southeasthern united…
Sudbury valley trustees, inc. ("the organization") works to protect natural areas and farmland for wildlife and people in the 36 communities that surround the sudbury, assabet, and concord rivers. the organization cares for some of the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Northeast Wilderness Trust Corporation and the most unlike its peers is Humane World for Animals 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 44 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) — 0% 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.
72 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. 72 of the 128 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 NATIONAL MUSEUM OF RACING INC ↗
- Who funds Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF HOG ISLAND AKA FOHI ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF LANCASTER INC ↗
- Who funds Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds Lancaster Historical Society Inc ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds MIDDLEBURG SPRING RACE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE ADIRONDACK COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Maine Audubon Society ↗
- Who funds Unity Environmental University ↗
- Who funds THE PEREGRINE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens Inc ↗
- Who funds AVENUES FOR JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds LANCASTERHISTORYORG ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DANCE ↗
- Who funds WESTOVER SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds TEMPLE GWATHMEY STEEPLECHASE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LANCASTER COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL 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: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Lancaster County Community Foundation · The Steinman Foundation · High Foundation · The New York Community Trust · Davis Conservation Foundation · The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment Inc · The Nature Conservancy · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Willis and Elsie Shenk Foundation · Ferree Foundation · Ibm International 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 Dobson Foundation Inc 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Northeast Wilderness Trust Corporation — 2% of income from government
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% 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 Dobson Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Dobson Foundation Inc 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.