· Private foundation
The Gardener Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k14 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $191k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+4 grants · $3.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000,000 |
| SARASOTA ORCHESTRA | $800,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHWEST AND CENTRAL FLORIDA | $300,000 |
| VISIBLE MEN ACADEMY | $250,000 |
| LITERACY OUTREACH OF GARFIELD COUNTY | $230,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $150,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF BELLPORT | $150,000 |
| SARASOTA ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION | $115,000 |
| SARASOTA OPERA | $100,000 |
| LONG ISLAND CARES | $100,000 |
| LITERACY COUNCIL OF SARASOTA | $100,000 |
| BIG WATERS LAND TRUST | $100,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF SARASOTA | $100,000 |
| STONY BROOK FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $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 (FY21–25, $506k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +30% since the first grant, against +0% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 7 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $22k 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
- SBSTONY BROOK FOUNDATION INC5× · 2021–2025 · $3.3M · revenue +80%
- VMVISIBLE MEN ACADEMY INC4× · 2021–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +1%
Rocky Mountain Institute3× · 2021–2024 · $700k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- ASARCHITECTURE SARASOTA INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $135k · revenue +209% · 38% of their budget
- RFROTARY FUTURES PROGRAM INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $35k · revenue +32% · 27% of their budget
- WWOR2WOWone grant, 2024 · $35k
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 new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
To provide educational displays and information on art in our area and to provide scholarships.
The advancement of marine and environmental sciences through scientific research, education and public outreach, leading new discoveries, revitalization and sustainability of our oceans and greater public understanding of our marine…
To create and sustain a vibrant performing arts center, advance education, and enrich communities by inspiring minds through the power of the arts.
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.
The mission of sarasota academy of the arts (saa) is to provide a motivating, challenging, and creative learning climate with a safe, caring, family atmosphere. saa will provide students interested in visual and performing arts with…
To cultivate and develop an expansive collection of trees, gardens, and plants for all to explore, enjoy and study; and to provide through education and stewardship, a greener, healthier, more beautiful environment.
Building on the foundation of the world's longest-running study of a wild dolphin population, the sarasota dolphin research program improves the lives of dolphins through: 1) research on dolphins in the wild to better understand how they…
To promote, encourage and enhance research activities at the university of south florida.
The mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Post-Morrow 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 38 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 66 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 STONY BROOK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VISIBLE MEN ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds Rocky Mountain Institute ↗
- Who funds The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens Inc ↗
- Who funds Big Waters Land Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF SARASOTA CO INC ↗
- Who funds LITERACY COUNCIL OF SARASOTA INC ↗
- Who funds Sarasota Opera Association Inc ↗
- Who funds SARASOTA ARCHITECTURAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF THE BELLPORT AREA INC ↗
- Who funds Long Island Cares Inc ↗
- Who funds ARCHITECTURE SARASOTA INC ↗
- Who funds ENSEMBLENEWSRQ INC ↗
- Who funds ALL FAITHS FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds ROTARY FUTURES PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BELLPORT BAY INC ↗
- Who funds VIA NOVA CHORALE 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: The Community Foundation of Sarasota Co Inc · Gulf Coast Community Foundation Inc · Lawton W Fitt & James I McLaren Foundation · David Schwartz Foundation Inc · Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 The Gardener Foundation Inc 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.
- All Faiths Food Bank Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Marie Selby Botanical Gardens 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 Gardener Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Gardener Foundation Inc 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.