· Private foundation
The Liman Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k18 grants · $58k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $174k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $30,000 |
| BROWN UNIVERSITY | $24,000 |
| LEGAL ACTION CENTER | $20,000 |
| YALE LAW SCHOOL | $18,000 |
| BARNARD COLLEGE SUMMER FELLOWSHIPS | $18,000 |
| LEGAL AID SOCIETY | $15,000 |
| THE JEWISH MUSEUM | $15,000 |
| SPELMAN COLLEGE | $12,000 |
| PRINCETON UNIVERSITY | $12,000 |
| SOCIETY OF THE FOUR ARTS | $10,000 |
| MARTHA'S VINEYARD HEBREW CENTER | $7,500 |
| SCHOOL OF THE ARTS FOUNDATION | $6,000 |
| COUDERT INSTITUTE | $5,000 |
| CULTURAL COUNCIL OF PALM BEACH COUNTY | $5,000 |
| NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN | $5,000 |
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 (FY21–22, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +40% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
43 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 20 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $16k 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
BARNARD COLLEGE4× · 2019–2022 · $118k · revenue +50%- SCSpelman College6× · 2019–2025 · $105k · revenue +27%
The Trustees of Princeton University5× · 2019–2025 · $104k · revenue +5%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF THE ART BUCHWALD COLLECT IONone grant, 2022 · $10k
- TPTHE PHILLIPS COLLECTIONgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +70%
- JTJEWISH THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF AMERICAone grant, 2019 · $5k
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
The mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to…
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
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…
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 institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Friends of Hebrew University Inc and the most unlike its peers is Friends of the Art Buchwald Collect Ion. 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 47 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
76 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. 76 of the 94 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 BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LEGAL ACTION CENTER OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BARNARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Spelman College ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds The Society of the Four Arts Inc ↗
- Who funds School of the Arts Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Cultural Council of Palm Beach County Inc ↗
- Who funds PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH FLORIDA PBS INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ART RESEARCH INC ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK LEGAL ASSISTANCE GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds FILM FORUM INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATION OF WOMEN ↗
- Who funds CIRCUIT ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds Palm Beach Civic Association Inc ↗
- Who funds IMMIGRANT JUSTICE CORPS INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MATERIALS FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds Town of Palm Beach United Way Inc ↗
- Who funds THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ARTSWESTCHESTER INC ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds New York Historical Society ↗
- Who funds THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION ↗
- Who funds SHERIFF'S MEADOW FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ARMORY ART CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S VINEYARD MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S VINEYARD COMMUNITY FOUNDATION 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: Martha's Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation Inc · The New York Community Trust · Mestal Foundation · G Kenneth and Ann Baum Philanthropic Fund · If Hummingbird Foundation Inc · Tower Family Fund Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · The Peter and Elizabeth C Tower Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · The William a Meyer Foundation · Marina P and Stephen E Kaufman Foundation · Swartz Foundation Trust
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 Liman 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Martha's Vineyard Community Foundation Inc — 34% of income from government
- The Lord's Place Inc — 12% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- American Antiquarian Society — 7% of income from government
- Cox Science Center and Aquarium Inc — 6% of income from government
- Hospice of Martha's Vineyard Inc Dba Hospice and Palliative Care of Martha's — 5% of income from government
- Sheriff's Meadow Foundation — 2% of income from government
- Martha's Vineyard Film Society Inc — 2% of income from government
- Neads Inc — 1% of income from government
- Circuit Arts Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Armory Art Center Inc — 0% of income from government
- Palm Beach Atlantic University Inc — 0% of income from government
- South Florida Pbs 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 Liman Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Liman 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.