· Private foundation
The Guston Foundation
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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS | $10,000 |
| MAVERICK CONCERTS | $5,000 |
| WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL | $5,000 |
| URBAN RURAL ACTION | $2,500 |
| UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC | $2,500 |
| WORLD FOOD PROGRAM | $2,500 |
| AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA | $2,500 |
| CLARK ART INSTITUTE | $1,500 |
| FRIENDS OF THE ACADEMY | $1,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART FOUNDATION INC | $1,000 |
| AMON CARTER MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART | $1,000 |
| WILLIAMSTOWN HISTORICAL MUSEUM INC | $500 |
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 (FY25–25, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% 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.
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 +28% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 2 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, 42% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $26k 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
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC7× · 2019–2025 · $70k · revenue +79%- MCMAVERICK CONCERTS INC3× · 2022–2025 · $10k · revenue +62%
MASSACHUSETTS MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART FOUNDATION INC7× · 2019–2025 · $9k · revenue +28%
Funded once
- MOMUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BOSTONone grant, 2022 · $100k
- TFTHE FOUNDATION FOR AIDS RESEARCHone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue -15%
- NWNEW WORLD SYMPHONY INCone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue +17%
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Founded in 1780, the american academy of arts and sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together "to…
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
The Television Academy is dedicated to celebrating excellence, innovation and the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences through recognition, education and leadership, while fostering a diverse, inclusive and accessible…
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
The american federation of arts initiates and organizes a national and international program of art exhibitions, publications, and educational activities to benefit the museum community and enrich the public's experience and understanding…
See schedule ovision: the cooper union for the advancement of science and art is dedicated to peter cooper's radical commitment to diversity and his founding vision that fair access to an inspiring free education and forums for courageous…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Williams College strives to achieve educational excellence by fostering a community of learning in collaboration with students, faculty, staff, devoted alumni and parents.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Academy in Rome and the most unlike its peers is The Foundation for Aids Research. 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 37 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 25 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 MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR AIDS RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds MAVERICK CONCERTS INC ↗
- Who funds MASSACHUSETTS MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds STERLING AND FRANCINE CLARK ART INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds AMON CARTER MUSEUM OF WESTERN ART ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME ↗
- Who funds NEW WORLD SYMPHONY INC ↗
- Who funds WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds Urban Rural Action ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds Jazz Foundation of America Inc ↗
- Who funds ALIMA USA INC ↗
- Who funds THE BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WILLIAMSTOWN HISTORICAL MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds TRINITY COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ACADEMY 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: National Philanthropic Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Guston 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.
- New World Symphony Inc — 0% of income from government
- Trinity College — 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 Guston Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Guston 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.