· Public charity
The Freedom Fund
We identify and invest in the most effective frontline efforts to eradicate modern slavery in the countries and sectors where it is most prevalent.
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.
The 20 grants below total $2,526,998 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $10,847,966 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $8,320,968 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 · FY2024
- $10k–50k5 grants · $143k
- $50k–250k12 grants · $1.5M
- $250k+3 grants · $841k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TRANSPARENTEM LTD | $300,000 |
| HUMAN TRAFFICKING LEGAL CENTRE | $287,500 |
| POLARIS | $253,125 |
| TIDES CENTER | $205,000 |
| GREENPEACE FUND | $200,000 |
| NORC | $185,840 |
| GLJ-ILRF | $150,000 |
| BUSARA CENTER FOR BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS INC | $133,108 |
| FREE THE SLAVES | $125,625 |
| CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY LAB | $120,000 |
| INSTITUTE OF FOOD | $117,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL LABOR RIGHTS FORUM | $90,000 |
| SURVIVOR ALLIANCE US | $87,000 |
| POPULATION COUNCIL INC | $80,000 |
| CLIMATE RIGHTS | $50,000 |
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, $2.8M) land where the poverty rate runs at 18%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 86% 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
Grants abroad, by region — $8.3M on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 7 regions. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: DIRECT FUNDING OF COMMUNITY BASED ANTI SLAVERY INTEVENTIONS
Stated purpose: DIRECT FUNDING OF COMMUNITY BASED ANTI SLAVERY INTEVENTIONS
Stated purpose: DIRECT FUNDING OF COMMUNITY BASED ANTI SLAVERY INTEVENTIONS
Stated purpose: DIRECT FUNDING OF COMMUNITY BASED ANTI SLAVERY INTEVENTIONS
Stated purpose: DIRECT FUNDING OF COMMUNITY BASED ANTI SLAVERY INTEVENTIONS
Stated purpose: DIRECT FUNDING OF COMMUNITY BASED ANTI SLAVERY INTEVENTIONS
Stated purpose: DIRECT FUNDING OF COMMUNITY BASED ANTI SLAVERY INTEVENTIONS
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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 +36% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 2 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $167k 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
- THTHE HUMAN TRAFFICKING LEGAL CENTER8× · 2017–2024 · $2.8M · revenue +121% · 58% of their budget
- CACorporate Accountability Lab6× · 2019–2024 · $768k · revenue +20% · 48% of their budget
- SASURVIVOR ALLIANCE7× · 2018–2024 · $690k · revenue ×15 · 44% of their budget
Funded once
- SFSUSTAINABLE FISHERY ADVOCATESone grant, 2017 · $75k · revenue -39%
NEO Philanthropy Incgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $75k · revenue +27%- TITHE INVESTMENT INTEGRATION PROJECT LLCone grant, 2020 · $65k
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 mission of the Fair Labor Association (FLA) is to protect workers' rights and improve working conditions worldwide for more than five million workers in the factories and farms of our affiliates. (see schedule o)
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
World coffee research unites the global coffee industry to drive science-based agricultural solutions to urgently secure a diverse and sustainable supply of quality coffee today and for generations to come. our mission is to grow, protect,…
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
To lead and coordinate the global initiative to address and prevent criminalization, violence, and impunity against indigenous peoples towards strengthening their collectives, solidarity, and actions.
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
At Shift, we have one purpose: to transform how business gets done in order to ensure respect for peoples lives and dignity. We believe that the best way to advance our mission is by working directly with Businesses to help shape their…
Fair trade usa is building an innovative model of responsible business, conscious consumerism, and shared value to eliminate poverty and enable a sustainable development for farmers, workers, their families, and communities around the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Free the Slaves and the most unlike its peers is Grace Farms Foundation 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 23 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 40 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 THE HUMAN TRAFFICKING LEGAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds TRANSPARENTEM LTD ↗
- Who funds POLARIS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds THE POPULATION COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds FREE THE SLAVES ↗
- Who funds Corporate Accountability Lab ↗
- Who funds SURVIVOR ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds GREENPEACE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION SDSU RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL LABOR RIGHTS FORUM ↗
- Who funds OXFAM-AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds VERITE INC ↗
- Who funds BUSARA CENTER FOR BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS INC ↗
- Who funds MADE IN A FREE WORLD ↗
- Who funds CHINA LABOR WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE OF FOOD TECHNOLOGISTS ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL LABOR SOLIDARITY ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE FISHERY ADVOCATES ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds Jobs with Justice Education Fund ↗
- Who funds Climate Rights International ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS RESOURCE CENTRE ↗
- Who funds National Economic and Social Rights Initiative ↗
- Who funds SWANITI INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds CHAB DAI INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds A BREEZE OF HOPE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Dark Bali ↗
- Who funds GRACE FARMS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GoodWeave International ↗
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: Humanity United · The Ford Foundation · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · Foundation to Promote Open Society · National Endowment for Democracy · Novo Foundation · New Venture Fund · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Humanity United Action · Avina Americas 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 Freedom Fund 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.
- Verite Inc — 19% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Freedom Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Freedom Fund 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.