· Private foundation
The Libra 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of The Libra Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 1 organization directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2020, the last year The Libra Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 127 organizations, $50M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2020
- $10k–50k9 grants · $200k
- $50k–250k101 grants · $12M
- $250k+52 grants · $38M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMALGAMATED CHARITABLE FOUNDATION | $9,630,928 |
| CENTER FOR WORKING FAMILIES FUND | $2,250,000 |
| BVM CAPACITY BUILDING INSTITUTE INC | $2,100,000 |
| COMMUNITY CHANGE | $2,100,000 |
| THE ELECTORAL JUSTICE VOTER FUND | $2,000,000 |
| NATIONAL DOMESTIC WORKERS ALLIANCE INC | $2,000,000 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION | $925,000 |
| URGE UNITE FOR REPRODUCTIVE & GENDER EQUITY | $650,000 |
| SOUTHERNERS ON NEW GROUND | $600,000 |
| PICO CALIFORNIA | $600,000 |
| GROUNDSWELL FUND | $600,000 |
| NETWORK ON WOMEN IN PRISON | $600,000 |
| NEW FLORIDA MAJORITY EDUCATION FUND INC | $600,000 |
| JUSTICE FOR MIGRANT WOMEN | $500,000 |
| COLOR OF CHANGE EDUCATION FUND INC | $500,000 |
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 (FY17–21, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 98% 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 +62% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
164 repeat relationships — 111 still active in FY2020, 53 since wound down; 49 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (too recent to call). Read against FY2020, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k 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
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC4× · 2017–2020 · $3.3M · revenue +102%
National Domestic Workers Alliance Inc3× · 2018–2020 · $2.4M · revenue +206%- BCBVM CAPACITY BUILDING INSTITUTE INC3× · 2018–2020 · $2.3M · revenue ×12
Funded once
- PDPRISM - DAILY KOS EDUCATION FUNDone grant, 2019 · $300k
- SCSTRONG CITY BALTIMORE INCone grant, 2019 · $250k · revenue 0%
- TETHE EXPLORATORIUMone grant, 2017 · $225k · revenue -14%
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.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Fund for Justice is a nationally connected social impact research and advocacy organization that works to achieve fundamental, systemic reform by addressing policies and practicies that prevent individuals from reaching their full…
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
The Alliance for Collective Action convenes leaders of environmental and social movements to advance solutions for a thriving planet. We advance our mission through the Alliance Center building and community, as well as through Collective…
Southern coalition for social justice partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities across the south to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights. through an intersectional and…
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
The american civil liberties union of northern california (aclu nc union) defends and advances the principles of freedom, equality and justice contained in the united states constitution. aclu nc union, a california mutual benefit…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The Equal Justice Society (EJS) is transforming the nations consciousness on racethrough law, social science, and the arts. EJS works to dismantle structural andinstitutional racism to advance robust equal protection under the Fourteenth…
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
To lead and coordinate the global initiative to address and prevent criminalization, violence, and impunity against indigenous peoples towards strengthening their collectives, solidarity, and actions.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Policylink and the most unlike its peers is Nashulai Maasai Conservancy Corporation. 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 24 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
248 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. 248 of the 331 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 Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds National Domestic Workers Alliance Inc ↗
- Who funds BVM CAPACITY BUILDING INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds THE ROGER BALDWIN FOUNDATION OF ACLU INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INC ↗
- Who funds MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds National Economic and Social Rights Initiative ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds EARTHRIGHTS INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL GREENGRANTS FUND ↗
- Who funds URGE UNITE FOR REPRODUCTIVE & GENDER EQUITY ↗
- Who funds GRASSROOTS INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Rights ↗
- Who funds DRUG POLICY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Environmental Health Coalition ↗
- Who funds Network on Women in Prison dba Legal Services for Prisoners w Children ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL POWER ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERNERS ON NEW GROUND INC ↗
- Who funds THOUSAND CURRENTS ↗
- Who funds Groundswell Fund ↗
- Who funds THE WORKING WORLD INC ↗
- Who funds PROTEUS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA RISING TOGETHER INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds MOVEMENT STRATEGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds Forward Together ↗
- Who funds California Environmental Justice Alliance ↗
- Who funds IMPACT JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PICO California ↗
- Who funds WESTERN STATES CENTER ↗
- Who funds Communities United for People ↗
- Who funds Border Network for Human Rights ↗
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: Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · The Heising-Simons Foundation · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · The Ford Foundation · Tides Foundation · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · Tides Center · The California Endowment · Foundation to Promote Open Society · New Venture Fund · Impactassetsinc
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 Libra 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.
- Baltimore Corps Inc — 15% of income from government
- Coalition of Communities of Color — 15% of income from government
- Verde Inc — 3% of income from government
- Ceres 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Libra Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Libra 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.