· Private foundation
The Dorf 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| National Philanthropic Trust | $8,900 |
| Denison University | $3,000 |
| The Packer Collegiate Institute | $2,500 |
| Pace University | $1,500 |
| Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Cen | $1,000 |
| Collegiate School | $500 |
| Hospice of the Treasure Coast | $300 |
| SPOKES | $300 |
| Monterey Bay Aquarium | $300 |
| French Hospital Medical Center Fdtn | $250 |
| San Luis Obispo Legal Assistance Fo | $250 |
| San Luis Obispo Friends of the Libr | $250 |
| Guiding Eyes for the Blind | $250 |
| Ocean Conservancy | $250 |
| Clery Center | $250 |
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 (FY17–25, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 6% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 25% of The Dorf Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 47% of the giving stays in NY; read by stated purpose it is 35% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +62% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
53 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2025, 25 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- DUDENISON UNIVERSITY9× · 2017–2025 · $23k · revenue +39%
- PCPACKER COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE7× · 2017–2025 · $20k · revenue +42%
- CUCOLGATE UNIVERSITY8× · 2017–2024 · $18k · revenue +80%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF AVILA PIER FOAP INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $1k · revenue +76%
- LILONG ISLAND COUNCILone grant, 2018 · $1k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $1k
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 association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
The ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
The california dental association is committed to the success of our members in service to their patients and the public.
The uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
The foundation's mission is to improve the oral health of all californians by supporting the dental profession and its efforts to meet community needs.
Mission: the mission of san diego opera is to deliver exceptional performances and exciting, accessible programs to diverse audiences, focusing on community partnerships, and the transformative and expressive power of the human voice. as…
Scu is a catholic and jesuit institution that makes student learning its central focus, promotes faculty and staff learning in its various forms, and exhibits organizational learning.
To promote philanthropy to make santa cruz county a better place to live, now and in the future.we bring together people, ideas, and resources to inspire philanthropy and accomplish great things.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
California college of the arts educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. benefitting from its san francisco bay area location, the college prepares…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Community Foundation San Luis Obispo and the most unlike its peers is Pta California Laguna Middle School. 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 46 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 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.
47 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. 47 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 DENISON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DANCEUSA ↗
- Who funds PACKER COLLEGIATE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds COLGATE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PAGE SEVENTY-THREE PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Spokes ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ↗
- Who funds COLLEGIATE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds PACE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds JOYCE THEATER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL PARK CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds OCEAN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SAFESPACE INC ↗
- Who funds WHEATON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK CITY BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds GUIDING EYES FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds FRENCH HOSPITAL MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN LUIS OBISPO FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds THE COUNCIL ON AGING OF MARTIN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds GUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds THE VIVIAN BEAUMONT THEATERINC D/B/A LINCOLN CENTER THEATER ↗
- Who funds COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATES OF SAN LUIS OBISPO COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF THE TREASURE COAST INC ↗
- Who funds SAN LUIS OBISPO LEGAL ASSISTANCE 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 loosely connected circle, clustered around a few shared anchors.
Open a dossier: The Community Foundation San Luis Obispo · The Community Foundation - Martin / St Lucie Inc · Jeffery and Sasha Szytel Family Foundation · The Brown Family Foundation · Mariner Sands Charity Week Inc · Must · Loblolly Community Foundation Inc · The Albert M Covelli Foundation · The Niner Foundation Inc · W and H Thomas Charitable Trust · Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida Foundation · Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties Inc
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 Dorf 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Safespace Inc — 25% of income from government
- Hope Rural School Inc — 6% of income from government
- Learning Ally Inc — 4% of income from government
- Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival Inc — 1% of income from government
- Wheaton College — 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 Dorf Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Dorf 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.