· Public charity
The Foundation of the Federal Bar Association
Promote and support legal research and education; advance the science of jurisprudence and facilitate the administration of justice; and foster improvements in the practice of federal law.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 83% of The Foundation of the Federal Bar Association’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 6 grants below total $65,987 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $211,545 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $145,558 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $53k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Federal Bar Association | $22,500 |
| Federal Bar Association Tampa Bay Chapter Inc | $10,000 |
| Baton Rouge Chapter of the Federal Bar Association | $10,000 |
| Washington Urban Debate League | $10,000 |
| Utah Center for Legal Inclusion | $7,500 |
| Federal Bar Association Phoenix Chapter | $5,987 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 85% of your 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of The Foundation of the Federal Bar Association’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, 11% of the giving stays in VA; read by stated purpose it is 5% — 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.
7 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 4 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, 49% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $33k 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
- FBFederal Bar Association4× · 2017–2025 · $96k · revenue +9%
- MLMID-MINNESOTA LEGAL ASSISTANCE4× · 2017–2020 · $39k · revenue +71%
- FBFederal Bar Association East District of MI Chapte3× · 2017–2023 · $22k · revenue +68%
Funded once
- LPLATINOJUSTICE PRLDEFone grant, 2018 · $25k · revenue -46%
- BABAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $17k · revenue +76%
- TRTEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +47%
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.
To advance the highest standards of excellence for the legal profession, to facilitate access to justice, and to serve the community at large. in support of this mission, the association will strive to 1) foster an inclusive community of…
The purposes of the arkansas bar association include the following: advance the administration of justice; foster and maintain on the part of attorneys high ideals of integrity, learning, competence and public service, and high standards…
The purpose of the minnesota association for justice shall be to uphold and defend the constitution of the united states; to advance the science of jurisprudence; to promote the administration of justice; to uphold the honor of the…
The Fund for Justice Education FJE was created to support the American Bar Associations ABA law-related and public services education programs.
To enhance advocacy skills, professionalism, and integrity of attorneys in the federal judicial system as well as supporting pro bono attorneys in the federal judicial system.
The association is dedicated to advancing the professionalism and legal skills of lawyers, promoting the interests of the legal profession, providing services to its members, advocating positions on law-related issues, encouraging public…
Provides education to criminal defense professionals.
Minnesota state bar association promotes the highest standards of excellence and inclusion within the legal profession, provides valued resources to its members, and strives to improve the law and the equal administration of justice for…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Minnesota Chapter Federal Bar Association and the most unlike its peers is The Advocates for Human Rights. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 42 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 35 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 Federal Bar Association ↗
- Who funds MID-MINNESOTA LEGAL ASSISTANCE ↗
- Who funds LATINOJUSTICE PRLDEF ↗
- Who funds Federal Bar Association East District of MI Chapte ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA CHAPTER FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION TAMPA BAY CHAPTER INC ↗
- Who funds TEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID INC ↗
- Who funds LONE STAR LEGAL AID ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON URBAN DEBATE LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds BATON ROUGE CHAPTER OF THE FED BAR ASSN ↗
- Who funds ORANGE COUNTY CHAPTER OF THE FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds The Massachusetts Chapter of the Federal Bar Association co Annabel Rodriguez ↗
- Who funds FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION CINCINNATI/NORTHERN KENTUCKY CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds Federal Bar Association Sacramento Chapter ↗
- Who funds UTAH CENTER FOR LEGAL INCLUSION ↗
- Who funds The Advocates For Human Rights ↗
- Who funds Federal Bar Association Utah ↗
- Who funds IMMIGRANT LAW CENTER OF MINNESOTA INC ↗
- Who funds FEDERAL BAR ASSOC PHOENIX CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA CHAPTER FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA JUSTICE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN MN REGIONAL LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT NORTH INNOCENCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION OREGON CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds FEDERAL BAR ASSOCIATION CHICAGO CHAPTER ↗
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: Equal Justice Works · Fredrikson & Byron Foundation · Robins Kaplan Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Legal Services Corporation · Greater Twin Cities United Way · Pohlad Family Foundation · The Jamf Nation Global Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Foundation of the Federal Bar Association 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.
- Bay Area Legal Services Inc — 14% 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 Foundation of the Federal Bar Association?
Find your warmest path to The Foundation of the Federal Bar Association 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.