· Private foundation
The Frederick P Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism
Its FY2024 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 61% of THE FREDERICK P LENZ FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN BUDDHISM’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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k17 grants · $101k
- $10k–50k43 grants · $609k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NAROPA UNIVERSITY | $41,833 |
| DRALA MOUNTAIN CENTER | $18,000 |
| TARA MANDALA | $17,500 |
| DHAMMADHARINI | $17,500 |
| SHAMBHALA USA | $17,500 |
| THE PROFOUND TREASURY DHARMA FOUNDATION | $17,000 |
| LOYOLA MARAMOUNT UNIVERSITY | $17,000 |
| LINEAGE PROJECT INC | $17,000 |
| DHARMADATTA COMMUNITY | $17,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $17,000 |
| TREASURE CARETAKER TRAINING | $16,000 |
| NEW YORK UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| SOTO ZEN BUDDHIST ASSOCIATION | $15,000 |
| VETERAN'S YOGA PROJECT INC | $15,000 |
| UPAYA ZEN CENTER INC | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $163k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 84% 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.
62 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2024, 33 since wound down; 30 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, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $329k 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
- NUNaropa University4× · 2017–2024 · $179k · revenue +34%
- LMLOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY6× · 2017–2024 · $79k · revenue +68%
- TGTHE GARRISON INSTITUTE4× · 2019–2024 · $45k · revenue +4%
Funded once
- NUNAROPA UNIVERSITYone grant, 2019 · $71k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $40k
- MLMindful Life Projectgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $30k · revenue +344%
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.
Buddhist meditation training based on modern science & psychology
Buddhist Meditation and Study
In a natural spiritual setting, the Dharmakaya Center for Wellbeing provides a wide range of practices drawn from ancient wisdom, for all levels of interest, in order to cultivate physical and emotional wellbeing in the greatest number of…
The nyingma institute was founded in 1972 by tibetan teacher and author tarthang tulku to present the teachings of the tibetan tradition to the west. (see schedule o for full statement)
An educational center providing retreat and study facilities for people interested in environmental stewardship and training in practices for peace.
Our purpose is to support the inner pathway of all who come to us. By inner pathway, we refer to the innate qualities of the human spirit: love, joy, gratitude, forgiveness, compassion, inner peace, beauty, and humor. The inner pathway is…
Religious culture and education, meditation and religions comparative study
To teach, preserve, and publish about Tibetan Buddhist meditation and Chinese esoteric practices.
Religious education
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Barre Center for Buddhist Studies Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Treasury of Lives 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 18 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 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
80 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. 80 of the 168 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 Naropa University ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Prison Dharma Network Inc ↗
- Who funds MINDFUL SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds VETERANS PATH INC ↗
- Who funds THE GARRISON INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Lineage Project Inc ↗
- Who funds VETERANS YOGA PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MISSION BE INC ↗
- Who funds Lions Roar Foundation ↗
- Who funds Center for the Contemplative Mind in Soc ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR MINDFUL LEARNING INC ↗
- Who funds Mindful Life Project ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST ↗
- Who funds DRALA MOUNTAIN CENTER Formerly Shambhala Mountain Center ↗
- Who funds BOUNDLESS FREEDOM PROJECT ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH SPIRITUALITY INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds EMMANUEL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DHARMA GATES INC ↗
- Who funds INWARD BOUND MINDFULNESS EDUCATION 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: BESS Family Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Tan Teo Charitable Foundation · The Owsley Brown III Philanthropic Found · Rsf Social Finance Inc · Sea Stone Foundation · Lostand Foundation · Riverstyx Foundation · Community Foundation Boulder County · The Himachal Foundation Inc · Hitter Family Foundation · Pema Chodron 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 Frederick P Lenz Foundation for American Buddhism 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.
- Ramapo College Foundation — 1% of income from government
- Emmanuel College — 0% of income from government
- Holistic Life Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- South Tech Charter Academy 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.