· Private foundation
The Ford Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k843 grants · $1.2M
- $10k–50k225 grants · $5.8M
- $50k–250k1867 grants · $231M
- $250k+1072 grants · $607M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC | $15,000,000 |
| BLUE MERIDIAN PARTNERS INC | $12,744,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR DETROIT'S FUTURE | $8,333,333 |
| ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC | $5,000,000 |
| HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM | $3,400,000 |
| DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE | $3,250,000 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC | $3,200,000 |
| THE GLOBAL FUND FOR WOMEN INC | $3,000,000 |
| EQUALITY FUND | $3,000,000 |
| ME TOO INTERNATIONAL INC | $2,515,000 |
| MS TRAINING CENTRE FOR DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION | $2,500,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS | $2,500,000 |
| MARY REYNOLDS BABCOCK FOUNDATION INCORPORATED | $2,370,000 |
| NEO PHILANTHROPY INC | $2,300,000 |
| UPTURN INC | $2,300,000 |
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 US giving — 75% of grant dollars ($4.2B). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 25% that went abroad ($1.4B) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $162.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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
Beyond the US — 25% of all-years giving ($1.4B)
95 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 5% of The Ford Foundation’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.
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 +46% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
1806 repeat relationships — 1256 still active in FY2024, 550 since wound down; 25 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20M 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
- BMBLUE MERIDIAN PARTNERS INC6× · 2019–2024 · $86M · revenue +2%
NEO Philanthropy Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $71M · revenue +191%
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES8× · 2017–2024 · $64M · revenue +15%
Funded once
- CWCivicus World Alliance for Citizen Participationone grant, 2017 · $3.4M
- MBMy Brother's Keeper Allianceone grant, 2017 · $3.1M · 49% of their budget
- TGThe Greater Washington Educational Telecomone grant, 2017 · $2.1M
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 international peace institute is an independent, non-profit organization working to strengthen inclusive multilateralism for a more peaceful and sustainable planet. through its research, convening, and strategic advising, ipi provides…
The Alliance leads national programs in media arts, digital equity, and emerging technologies.
Inequality media uses digital media to educate & engage the public on economic inequality & imbalance of power in america. we catalyze action by creating engaging shareable videos & posts released via trad'l/social media
Highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on u.s. foreign policy
Deliver world-class resources and mentoring to enable every entrepreneur across the globe to realize their maximum potential.
Icij is a global investigative journalism network, an international newsroom and a builder of open-source tools that make sense of massive, complex datasets. our cross-border stories reveal broken systems and widespread corruption that…
The center for international private enterprise (cipe) is a non-profit global organization that works to strengthen democracy and build competitive, resilient markets in many of the world's most challenging environments. working alongside…
United for a Fair Economy challenges the concentration of wealth and power by using popular economics education, trainings and creative communications to support social movements working for a resilient, sustainable and equitable economy.
The national bureau of economic research is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. it is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic…
Inspired by jewish values, the national council of jewish women is a grassroots organization of volunteers and advocates who strive for social justice by improving the quality of life for women, children, and families, and by safeguarding…
Women donors network is a multigenerational, multiracial feminist network that channels collective power and resources in solidarity with movements to protect and advance gender, racial, economic, and climate justice toward our vision of…
To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust. [see continuation on schedule o] by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Open Government Partnership Secretariat and the most unlike its peers is Sesame Workshop. 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 27 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
1083 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. 1083 of the 2,000 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds BLUE MERIDIAN PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR DETROIT'S FUTURE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY INC ↗
- Who funds NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds National Domestic Workers Alliance Inc ↗
- Who funds PROTEUS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY VALUES WORK A MULTI-STATE CONSORTIUM ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds DEMOS A NETWORK FOR IDEAS AND ACTION LTD ↗
- Who funds OXFAM-AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT LAW PROJECT ↗
- Who funds POWERSWITCH ACTION ↗
- Who funds ENTERPRISE COMMUNITY PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC ↗
- Who funds COLOR OF CHANGEORG EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Neighborhood Funders Group ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE'S ACTION INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds URGENT ACTION FUND FOR FEMINIST ACTIVISM ↗
- Who funds ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WE DREAM NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds Jobs with Justice Education Fund ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL FUND FOR WOMEN 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: Foundation to Promote Open Society · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc · Democracy Fund Inc · The Scherman Foundation Inc · Surdna Foundation Inc · Foundation for a Just Society · Freedom Together Foundation · Mertz Gilmore Foundation · Booth Ferris Foundation Xxxxx4008 · New York Women's Foundation Inc · The Andrew W Mellon 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 Ford 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Enterprise Community Partners Inc — 22% of income from government
- Social Finance Inc — 12% of income from government
- Disability Rights Fund Inc — 10% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
- Wgbh Educational Foundation — 1% of income from government
- The Center for Effective Philanthropy Inc — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America 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.