· Private foundation
The India Benton Lesser Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k15 grants · $18k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $15k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DAVIS LOVE FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,600 |
| SOLO PARENT SOCIETY | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| HOLIDAY HOUSE SRQ | $1,500 |
| CHILDREN FIRST | $1,500 |
| RESCUE MISSION OF MIDDLE GEORGIA | $1,200 |
| YMCA OF ATHENS | $1,200 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| WESLY GLEN MINISTRIES | $1,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB | $1,000 |
| STATE COLLEGE OF FLORIDA | $1,000 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY | $500 |
| HUMANE SOCIETY | $368 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS | $250 |
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 (FY17–25, $38k) land where the poverty rate runs at 20%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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 +75% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 30 since wound down; 8 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
- RMRESCUE MISSION OF MIDDLE GEORGIA INC7× · 2018–2025 · $26k · revenue +75%
- ARAnimal Rescue Coalition Inc2× · 2018–2019 · $20k · revenue +272%
- POPETS ON WHEELS INC8× · 2017–2024 · $11k · revenue +12%
Funded once
- PTPGA TOUR CHARITY EVENTone grant, 2024 · $19k
- FOFRIENDS OF HAWAII CHARITIES INCone grant, 2017 · $11k · revenue -82%
- HCHOUSTON CHARITY ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2017 · $11k
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.
Pines of sarasota foundation secures funding to provide compassionate care, vital resources, and financial assistance for the seniors, children, and the nursing community serving them.
Lead agency in the community for providers of homeless/prevention services in manatee/sarasota. responsible to plan strategies with community partners, assist with grants, educate the public, advocate with local leadership, administer the…
Animal care sanctuary's lifesaving mission as a no kill organization envisions a community that promotes turning compassion into action for companion animals by: 1.) adopting healthy pet companions into loving homes. 2.) promoting the…
Our mission is to encourage, honor and support the human-animal bond in the suncoast region of florida. our vision is to celebrate a community whose pets are safe and loved. suncoast humane society provides sheltering, prevention and…
None
Florida community health centers, inc. (fchc) is a federally qualified health center serving medically needy populations in south florida, with an emphasis on serving rural and farm worker communities.
Sarasota Opera produces impassioned opera performances true to the vision of the composer, to entertain, enrich, educate, and inspire a life-long love of opera in our diverse and growing communities.
The mission of the realtor association of sarasota and manatee is to advance members' professionalism through delivery of education and resources, and to advocate for real estate in the communities served.
Suncoast hospice's mission is to be the center to improve life for those touched by advanced illness, death, dying, grief, bereavement and other end-of-life issues.
The SPCA Monterey County's Mission is assuring compassionate treatment of all animals through rescue, rehabilitation, protection and education. The SPCA shelters homeless, neglected, and abused pets, including dogs, cats, horses, exotic…
As the areas premier no-kill shelter, the humane society of sarasota county engages the hearts, hands, and minds of the community to help animals.
Our mission is to provide solutions to community challenges by engaging volunteers aged 55+. we help at-risk children, elders, adults with disabilities, caregivers, & veterans. our volunteers benefit from staying active & living with sense…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Girls Incorporated of Sarasota County and the most unlike its peers is Fandango Sanctuary 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 36 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
37 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. 37 of the 84 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 RESCUE MISSION OF MIDDLE GEORGIA INC ↗
- Who funds SARASOTA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Animal Rescue Coalition Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF HAWAII CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds PETS ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds ASOLO THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds Children First Inc ↗
- Who funds EAGLE RANCH INC ↗
- Who funds Southeastern Guide Dogs Inc ↗
- Who funds ARTIST SERIES CONCERTS OF SARASOTA ↗
- Who funds MACON VOLUNTEER CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds Wesley Glen Ministries Inc ↗
- Who funds Georgia Transplant Foundation 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 · Publix Super Markets Charities Inc · Manatee Community Foundation Inc · Tarr Charitable Family Foundation Inc · Georgia Power Foundation Inc · Junior League of Sarasota Inc · Theda Bohrer Wendy and Tracey Shapiro Charitable Foundation Inc · The Louis and Gloria Flanzer Philanthropic Trust · William G and Marie Selby Foundation Inc · Perkins-Ponder Foundation · James Hyde Porter Testamentary Trust
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 India Benton Lesser 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.
- Children First Inc — 100% of income from government
- Safe Place and Rape Crisis Center Inc — 23% of income from government
- Pines of Sarasota Inc — 18% of income from government
- Spca Inc — 0% of income from government
- Safe Children Coalition Inc — 0% of income from government
- Southeastern Guide Dogs Inc — 0% of income from government
- Animal Rescue Coalition Inc — 0% of income from government
- Cat Depot — 0% of income from government
- Florida Studio Theatre 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.
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Find your warmest path to The India Benton Lesser 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.