· Private foundation
The Garfield 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
70% of The Garfield Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Rockefeller Family Fund Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 16 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2020, the last year The Garfield Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 49 organizations, $3M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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.
By grant size · FY2020
- Under $10k47 grants · $160k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $312k
- $50k–250k18 grants · $1.6M
- $250k+2 grants · $1.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CLEAN PRODUCTION ACTION INC | $870,117 |
| MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION | $585,000 |
| CHILDREN'S ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH NETWORK | $244,872 |
| LABOR INSTITUTE | $194,872 |
| CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH | $184,872 |
| CAROLD INSTITUTE | $100,000 |
| FORUM FOR THE FUTURE | $100,000 |
| COMMON FUTURE | $75,000 |
| WINROCK INTERNATIONAL | $75,000 |
| ENERGY ACTION NETWORK | $65,000 |
| INQUIRING SYSTEMS INC | $60,000 |
| FUNDERS' NETWORK FOR SMART GROWTH AND LIVABLE COMMUNITIES | $57,000 |
| NATURE FOR ALL | $50,000 |
| TREE PEOPLE INC | $50,000 |
| CAPITAL INSTITUTE | $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 (FY17–22, $87k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 31% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 19% of The Garfield Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +39% since the first grant, against +34% for the ones you funded once.
80 repeat relationships — 50 still active in FY2020, 30 since wound down; 43 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (too recent to call). Read against FY2020, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- CEChildren's Environmental Health Network5× · 2017–2021 · $1.0M · revenue +66% · 35% of their budget
NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC3× · 2017–2019 · $385k · revenue +41%- FFFORUM FOR THE FUTURE US INC2× · 2018–2019 · $370k · revenue +73%
Funded once
- BABlueGreen Alliance Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $213k · revenue +34%
- PFPISCES FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $100k · revenue -91%
- WIWINROCK INTERNATIONALone grant, 2019 · $75k
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 union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
Environment next supports individuals, nonprofits and businesses around the world on solutions to complex climate issues. we provide leadership, outreach and communication support, grants, and investments to empower leaders and their ideas…
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
To research and develop healthy climate solutions comprising global food security, ecosystem regeneration and carbon balance in seas and soils.
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
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…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
E3g is a leading international not-for-profit think tank specialising in climate diplomacy harnessing expertise in the politics and economics of climate change.
To investigate, research, write, publish, present conferences and teach with respect to global, regional, transboundary, and comparative environmental issues and to make the findings from such activities available to the general public; to…
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
Terraset uses philanthropic capital to purchase permanent, high-quality carbon removal. we pool donations from individuals, foundations, family offices, and donor advised funds, and make strategic purchases of high-quality carbon removal…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Policylink and the most unlike its peers is The McConnell Foundation. 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 34 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) — 1% 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.
119 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. 119 of the 176 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 MINNEAPOLIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLEAN PRODUCTION ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds Children's Environmental Health Network ↗
- Who funds THE LABOR INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER FAMILY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Environmental Health ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds FORUM FOR THE FUTURE US INC ↗
- Who funds BREAST CANCER PREVENTION PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC CLARITY ↗
- Who funds TREEPEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds BlueGreen Alliance Foundation ↗
- Who funds ENERGY ACTION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds CONSUMERS FOR DENTAL CHOICE INC ↗
- Who funds WATER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES ALLIANCE FOR A NEW ECONOMY ↗
- Who funds URBAN SUSTAINABILITY DIRECTORS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds PACOIMA BEAUTIFUL ↗
- Who funds NATURE FOR ALL ↗
- Who funds PISCES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE FUNDERS NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds THE MARION INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds THE STORY OF STUFF PROJECT ↗
- Who funds HEAL THE BAY ↗
- Who funds MOVEMENT STRATEGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMON FUTURE ↗
- Who funds WINROCK INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION BOULDER COUNTY ↗
- Who funds POLICYLINK ↗
- Who funds THE FORBES FUNDS ↗
- Who funds WorldLink ↗
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: Resources Legacy Fund · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Freedom Together Foundation · Climateworks Foundation · The Schmidt Family Foundation · Patagoniaorg · The McKnight Foundation · California Community Foundation · The Marisla Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · United States Energy Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation 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 Garfield 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.
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- Buzzards Bay Coalition — 37% of income from government
- United Way of Greater New Bedford Inc — 35% of income from government
- Sterling College — 10% of income from government
- Passage Theatre Company Inc — 10% of income from government
- New Bedford Economic Development Council Inc — 2% of income from government
- Artists for Humanity Inc — 2% of income from government
- Old Dartmouth Historical Society — 2% of income from government
- Rising Tide Capital Inc and Subsidiaries — 2% of income from government
- The Marion Institute Inc — 1% of income from government
- Our Sisters School — 0% of income from government
- Energy Action Network 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 Garfield Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Garfield 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.