· Public charity
The Lenfest Institute for Journalism Special Asset Fund of Tpf
The mission of the lenfest institute for journalism special asset fund of the philadelphia foundation (the institute) is to receive, manage, and distribute assets in support of the philadelphia foundation (tpf) by enabling quality local journalism that serves its communities.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 64% of THE LENFEST INSTITUTE FOR JOURNALISM SPECIAL ASSET FUND OF TPF’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
- Under $10k7 grants · $51k
- $10k–50k49 grants · $981k
- $50k–250k32 grants · $2.5M
- $250k+9 grants · $11M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER | $7,847,500 |
| SPOTLIGHT PA | $510,000 |
| SEATTLE TIMES COMPANY | $500,000 |
| NEWSDAY LLC | $500,000 |
| CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC | $500,000 |
| STAR TRIBUNE MEDIA INTERMEDIATE HOLDINGS COMPANY II | $500,000 |
| CAMBRIDGE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INC | $475,000 |
| FEDERATION OF NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS INC | $325,000 |
| THE HAITIAN TIMES | $276,625 |
| NUEVA ESPERANZA INC | $237,000 |
| DELAWARE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC | $150,000 |
| CIVIC CAPITAL CONSULTING | $125,000 |
| WURD RADIO LLC | $125,000 |
| WHYY | $120,000 |
| FUNTIMES MAGAZINE LLC | $107,500 |
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 (FY18–24, $2.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 77% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 16% of The Lenfest Institute for Journalism Special Asset Fund of Tpf’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. Read by recipient address, 60% of the giving stays in PA; read by stated purpose it is 44% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +70% since the first grant, against +36% for the ones you funded once.
114 repeat relationships — 57 still active in FY2024, 57 since wound down; 38 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.8M 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
- TUTemple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education6× · 2017–2023 · $4.9M · revenue +5%
- SPSPOTLIGHT PA3× · 2022–2024 · $3.4M · revenue +853% · 37% of their budget
- RPRESOLVE PHILADELPHIA INC5× · 2019–2024 · $2.7M · revenue +122% · 56% of their budget
Funded once
- APAMERICA PRESS INCone grant, 2019 · $3.4M
- CBCAPITAL B NEWS INCone grant, 2021 · $1.3M · revenue -4%
- IPINDEPENDENCE PUBLIC MEDIA OF PHILADELPHIA INCone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue -50%
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 educate journalists and the public, and foster public debate, about improving political journalism to reflect public needs and hold the powerful accountable.
Nashville public radio's mission is to be the most trusted & independent nashville voice, connecting our communities through non-partisan journalism, compelling storytelling, civil conversation and music discovery.
The mission of the springfield daily citizen is to inform our community and be a catalyst for good.
Providing research, education and practical information all aimed at optimizing newspapers' business operations, deepening their community engagement and enhancing the quality of their journalism.
To bring quality public television programs and resources to communities throughout new jersey and its tri-state neighbors. its content, both on-air and online, aims to reflect the diverse
The daily pennsylvanian exists to inform the penn community of relevant news and opinion while providing a training vehicle for students.
Public narrative teaches journalists and non-profit organizations to tell better stories in order to fulfill our missions to support a free and informed press, and to ensure that non-profit and neighborhood voices are heard, and are part…
Through in-depth and thought-provoking journalism, prism reflects the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice. As an independent and nonprofit newsroom LED by journalists of color, we tell stories from the ground up: to…
The american journalism project, inc. is a first-of-its-kind venture philanthropy dedicated to building and supporting local news across the country. american journalism project makes grants to nonprofit news organizations, partners with…
States newsroom is the nation's largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, with reporting from every capital. every newsroom is led by a veteran local journalist with deep knowledge of the state's political history and media…
The news media alliance (nma) is a nonprofit organization representing nearly 2,000 news media organizations and their multi-media platform businesses in the us, canada and europe.
Canary Media is an independent, nonprofit newsroom covering the transition to clean energy.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Media Impact Funders Inc and the most unlike its peers is NORTH10 Philadelphia. 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 19 years old; the field is 19. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 9% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
191 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. 191 of the 330 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 City Report Inc ↗
- Who funds Temple University - Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education ↗
- Who funds SPOTLIGHT PA ↗
- Who funds RESOLVE PHILADELPHIA INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST DRAFT NEWS INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PRESS INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL TRUST FOR LOCAL NEWS ↗
- Who funds LOCAL MEDIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WHYY INC ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL B NEWS INC ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds Cambridge Artificial Intelligencer Inc ↗
- Who funds CULTURETRUST GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds CIVIC NEWS COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Nueva Esperanza Inc ↗
- Who funds FEDERATION OF NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS ↗
- Who funds PUBLICSOURCE ↗
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: Institute for Nonprofit News · Local Independent Online News Publishers Inc · Solutions Journalism Network Inc · The Groundtruth Project Inc · The Miami Foundation Inc · The William Penn Foundation · The Philadelphia Foundation · Pro Publica Inc · John S and James L Knight Foundation · Independence Public Media of Philadelphia Inc · The Int'L Center for Journalists Inc · American Journalism Project 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 Lenfest Institute for Journalism Special Asset Fund of Tpf 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.
- Delaware Community Foundation Inc — 13% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Vermont Journalism Trust Ltd — 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.