· Private foundation
The International Retinal Research Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 40% of THE INTERNATIONAL RETINAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k4 grants · $115k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $78k
- $250k+4 grants · $1.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY | $525,000 |
| UAB DEPT OF OPHTHALMOLOGY | $450,000 |
| THE RETINA SOCIETY | $275,000 |
| THE MACULA SOCIETY | $270,000 |
| RESEARCH TO PREVENT BLINDNESS | $77,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $35,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $35,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON | $35,000 |
| SIGHT SAVERS AMERICA | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 82% of your 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.
23 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
Vanderbilt University8× · 2017–2024 · $11M · revenue +74%- RTRESEARCH TO PREVENT BLINDNESS INC7× · 2017–2024 · $700k · revenue +27%
- RSRETINA SOCIETY INC3× · 2022–2024 · $425k · revenue +6%
Funded once
- UCUAB CENTER FOR LOW VISION REHABone grant, 2020 · $500k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $250k
- EUERASMUS UNIVERSITYone grant, 2019 · $104k
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.
To further the conservation, improvement and restoration of human eyesight" (mrs. doheny - 1947).
THE MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY ("THE INFIRMARY") IS A NOT-FOR-PROFIT TEACHING HOSPITAL CONDUCTING PATIENT CARE AND RESEARCH. THE INFIRMARY IS A TEACHING HOSPITAL OF HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL AND AN INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR RESEARCH.…
Arvo advances research worldwide into understanding the visual system and preventing, treating and curing its disorders.
MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR ASSOCIATES, INC. ("MEEA") IS A SPECIALTY PHYSICIAN GROUP PRACTICE. IT PROVIDES CARE FOR PATIENTS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY, INC. ("MEEI"), A RELATED ORGANIZATION. THE PRACTICE SPECIALIZES IN…
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.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
To educate caring, inspired health care professionals who are prepared to deliver collaborative, patient-centric health care in an interprofessional environment.
The vitreoretinal surgery foundation strives to promote education and research related to retinal and macular diseases. we support research by funding awards for young investigators with a potential for a career devoted to retinal disease…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
Drexel university fulfills its founder's vision of preparing each new generation of students for productive professional and civic lives while also focusing its collective expertise on solving society's greatest problems. drexel is an…
The american society of ophthalmic plastic and recontructive surgery (asoprs) was founded to establish a qualified body of surgeons who have training and experience in the highly specialized field of oculofacial plastic surgery. the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Schepens Eye Research Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is University of Michigan. 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 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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.
18 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. 18 of the 47 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 Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds RESEARCH TO PREVENT BLINDNESS INC ↗
- Who funds RETINA SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds THE MACULA SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds THE ROBERT MACHEMER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Fight for Sight Inc ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Corporation ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Schepens Eye Research Institute 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: Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 International Retinal Research 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% 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 International Retinal Research Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The International Retinal Research 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.