· Private foundation
The Karen Toffler Charitable Trust
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k5 grants · $200k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $392k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY | $112,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES | $110,000 |
| HARVARD UNIVERSITY | $65,000 |
| FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY | $55,000 |
| NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY | $50,000 |
| COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| BOSTON UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| HOWARD UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| TEMPLE UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
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 11%. 85% 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.
13 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $50k 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
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY5× · 2020–2024 · $298k · revenue +42%
TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY5× · 2020–2024 · $250k · revenue +34%- TUTemple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education5× · 2020–2024 · $235k · revenue +14%
Funded once
- WMWOMEN MAKE MOVIES INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $40k · revenue +36%
- TATHE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUNDgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $34k · revenue +25%
AMERICAN UNIVERSITYone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue 0%
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 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.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
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…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
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.
Education and Research
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
Education, research, medical services and other public services.
Case Western Reserve University is an independent, research-oriented university with broadly based strengths in health, including medicine, nursing and dentistry; in engineering; in the arts and sciences; and in law, management and social…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
A diverse and sustainable learning community dedicated to discovery and excellence in teaching, scholarship and practice, pacific university inspires students to think, care, create and pursue justice in our world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Georgetown University and the most unlike its peers is Citrus County 4-H Association Inc. 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 53 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) — 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.
21 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. 21 of the 28 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 President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Temple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds THE HOWARD UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CITRUS COUNTY 4-H ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WOMEN MAKE MOVIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC COUNCIL ON INTERNATIONAL POLICY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS ↗
- Who funds UC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GBSCIDP FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds PLATELET DISORDER SUPPORT ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds INFECTIOUS DISEASES SOCIETY OF AMERICA ↗
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization The Karen Toffler Charitable Trust 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.
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% 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 Karen Toffler Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to The Karen Toffler Charitable Trust 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.