· Private foundation
The G Unger Vetlesen Foundation
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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k4 grants · $100k
- $50k–250k26 grants · $2.1M
- $250k+12 grants · $6.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MONELL CHEMICAL SENSES CENTER | $1,750,000 |
| WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY | $1,000,000 |
| WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION | $1,000,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ROSENSTIEL SCHOOL OF MARINE AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE | $500,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON COLLEGE OF THE ENVIRONMENT GIFT SERVICES | $400,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND GRADUATE SCHOOL OF OCEANOGRAPHY | $375,000 |
| MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORIES | $350,000 |
| UC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY | $300,000 |
| RUTGERS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES | $250,000 |
| OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EARTH OCEAN & ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES | $250,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LAMONT-DOHERTY EARTH OBSERVATORY | $250,000 |
| BIGELOW LABORATORY FOR OCEAN SCIENCES | $250,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS INSTITUTE FOR GEOPHYSICS | $200,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA WHITNEY LABORATORY FOR MARINE BIOSCIENCES | $200,000 |
| BONEFISH AND TARPON TRUST | $175,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 51% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
46 repeat relationships — 37 still active in FY2024, 9 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $500k 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
- WCWildlife Conservation Society5× · 2020–2024 · $4.5M · revenue +57%
- WHWOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION5× · 2020–2024 · $4.3M · revenue +35%
- MBMARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY5× · 2020–2024 · $2.3M · revenue +27%
Funded once
- CECAPE ELEUTHERA SCHOOLone grant, 2020 · $150k
- RURUTGERS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF MARINE AND COASTAL SCIENCESone grant, 2020 · $150k
- SFSCHOOLYARD FILMS INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +154% · 30% of their budget
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The institutes mission is to cultivate a responsibility for the natural environment and our human communities through interdisciplinary science education.
Save threatened marine life using pioneering research, education, and sustainable conservation solutions
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
To advocate for policy changes by governments and corporations in order to preserve ocean life and return the oceans to their former abundance.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Increase societal understanding of the earth system through scientific research and education.
The institute is dedicated to scientific research, the results of which are used to promote public awareness and education in the areas of conservation biology and ecology,including the wise use of natural resources.
NatureServe's mission is to leverage the power of science, data, and technology to guide biodiversity conservation and stewardship. We activate our mission by working with a network of 60+ partners located in states and provinces across…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Island Conservation and the most unlike its peers is Wildlife Conservation Society. 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 49 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 57 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 Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds MONELL CHEMICAL SENSES CENTER ↗
- Who funds MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY ↗
- Who funds Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences ↗
- Who funds THE PEREGRINE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds GULF OF MAINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BONEFISH & TARPON TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds ISLAND CONSERVATION ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Institute of Technology ↗
- Who funds Scenic Hudson Inc ↗
- Who funds Resources for the Future Inc ↗
- Who funds WEBB INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Atlantic Salmon Federation (US) Inc ↗
- Who funds BLACK ROCK FOREST CONSORTIUM INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE SOUND ↗
- Who funds ORGANIZATION FOR TROPICAL STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds GAME CONSERVANCY USA INC ↗
- Who funds CAPE ELEUTHERA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH ATLANTIC SALMON FUND ↗
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: The Pew Charitable Trusts · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Impactassetsinc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 The G Unger Vetlesen 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — 63% of income from government
- Save the Sound — 37% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Marine Biological Laboratory — 20% of income from government
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% of income from government
- United Way of Palm Beach County Inc — 1% 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 G Unger Vetlesen Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The G Unger Vetlesen 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.