· Public charity
Democracy Matters Foundation
Support of progressive communications and programs.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DEMOCRACY MATTERS | $31,380,000 |
| ONYX IMPACT | $1,867,250 |
| CHOOSE CHICAGO FOUNDATION | $400,000 |
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 (FY22–22, $21k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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
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 -28% since the first grant, against -65% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 3 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $34M 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
- AFAB FOUNDATION2× · 2021–2022 · $2.5M · revenue +651%
- ARAMERICAN RESCUE PROJECT2× · 2022–2023 · $1.4M · revenue -46% · 67% of their budget
- NGNOBIS GROUP INC2× · 2021–2022 · $375k
Funded once
- AFALLIANCE FOR OPEN SOCIETY INT'L INCone grant, 2022 · $560k · revenue -98%
- FFFACTS FIRST USAone grant, 2023 · $535k · revenue -98% · 37% of their budget
- IIInseparable Incgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $350k · revenue +389%
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.
Dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the u.s. media.
American independent media (aim) is a progressive media organization that produces news and information content regarding government and politics.
Inform the public by providing news
The arc prize foundation advances progress toward artificial general intelligence (agi) by creating public benchmarks, running competitions,and fostering a global research community. we educate students, researchers, and the broader public…
Iri advances freedom and democracy worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, democratic governance and the rule of law.
Epi uses the tools of economics to bring the interests of low- and middle-income workers into economic policy discussions. epi's rigorous research and transformative ideas fortify worker organizing, build a shared understanding of how…
American oversight advances truth, accountability, and democracy by enforcing the public's right to government records.
Media matters action network was organized for the purpose of monitoring, analyzing and correcting conservative misinformation in the u.s. media.
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
Reduce global poverty and improve lives through innovative economic research that drives better policy and practice by the world's top decision makers. we focus on the intersection of developing countries and the governments, institutions…
FDD Action is a non-profit, non-partisan 504(c)4 organization established to advocate for effective policies to promote U.S. National Security and defend free nations.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The American Independent Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Bard College. 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.
15 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. 15 of the 26 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 DEMOCRACY MATTERS ↗
- Who funds AB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ONYX IMPACT INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN RESCUE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR OPEN SOCIETY INT'L INC ↗
- Who funds FACTS FIRST USA ↗
- Who funds CHOOSE CHICAGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Inseparable Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ABLE NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds THE FRANKLIN FORUM ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN INDEPENDENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF ANIM ↗
- Who funds With God All Things Are Possible ↗
- Who funds EVAC 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: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Democracy Matters 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.
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 Democracy Matters Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Democracy Matters Foundation 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.