· Private foundation
The Li Lu Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k3 grants · $79k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $473k
- $250k+3 grants · $3.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE ASIAN AMERICAN FOUNDATION | $2,000,000 |
| COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY | $1,002,500 |
| ENDOWMENT OF THE US INSTITUTE OF PEACE | $300,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO | $120,000 |
| THE PARADISE INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION | $103,098 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| COMMITTEE OF 100 | $50,000 |
| EDWARD CHARLES FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| SEATTLE UNIVERSITY | $50,000 |
| NYU STERN BUSINESS SCHOOL | $33,400 |
| ST THOMAS SCHOOL | $31,000 |
| NATIONAL MINORITY SUPPLIER DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL | $15,000 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY23–24, $100k) 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.
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 8% of The Li Lu Foundation’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.
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 +36% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 22 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- CICALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY6× · 2017–2023 · $1.0M · revenue +35%
- EOENDOWMENT OF THE US INSTITUTE OF PEACE3× · 2021–2024 · $900k · revenue +49%
- PSPOLYTECHNIC SCHOOL5× · 2019–2023 · $530k · revenue +36%
Funded once
- GOGUARDIAN OF ANGELS CHARITABLE FUNDone grant, 2020 · $1.0M
The Rand Corporationone grant, 2023 · $1.0M · revenue -1%- HUHUAZHONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGYone grant, 2020 · $106k
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
To provide accurate, objective information and analysis on international strategic issues for legislators, diplomats, foreign affairs analysts, international business leaders, economists, the military, defense commentators, journalists,…
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.
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 union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
Golden gate university prepares individuals to lead and serve by providing high quality, practice-based educational programs in law, taxation, business and related professions - as a nonprofit institution - in an innovative and challenging…
The mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.
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.
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…
Aacsb international provides quality assurance of business school programs, the latest in business education intelligence, thought leadership, and learning and development services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Aspen Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Seattle University. 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 37 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 59 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 THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds The Rand Corporation ↗
- Who funds ENDOWMENT OF THE US INSTITUTE OF PEACE ↗
- Who funds POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST THOMAS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds COMMITTEE OF 100 INC ↗
- Who funds THE J DAVID GLADSTONE INSTITUTES ↗
- Who funds UC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE ↗
- Who funds UNITED CHINESE AMERICANS ↗
- Who funds TEACH FOR ALL INC ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds EDWARD CHARLES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Center for Humane Technology ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds CITY YEAR INC ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds TRAGEDY ASSISTANCE PROGRAM FOR SURVIVORS INC ↗
- Who funds WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRED HUTCHINSON CANCER RESEARCH CENTER ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds LISTEN FIRST PROJECT 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 · Asian Pacific Community Fund of Southern California · Wm Keck Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · California Community Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Li Lu 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences — 3% 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 Li Lu Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Li Lu 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.