· Private foundation
The Lodestar 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k26 grants · $137k
- $10k–50k46 grants · $910k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $485k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER PHOENIX | $250,000 |
| KEEP OUR REPUBLIC CHARITABLE FUND | $160,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $75,000 |
| VALLEY OF THE SUN UNITED WAY | $50,000 |
| ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMER | $50,000 |
| SOCIAL VENTURE PARTNERS INTERNATIONAL | $50,000 |
| SOCIAL VENTURE PARTNERS INTERNATIONAL | $50,000 |
| CIVIC VENTURES | $50,000 |
| INDEPENDENT SECTOR | $38,000 |
| BARROW NEUROLOGICAL FOUNDATION | $36,000 |
| UNITED PHILANTHROPY FORUM | $35,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY | $35,000 |
| GIVING TUESDAY INC | $30,000 |
| CDA COLLABORATIVE LEARNING PROJECTS INC | $30,000 |
| SEACHANGE CAPITAL PARTNERS INC | $28,138 |
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 (FY21–25, $149k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 22% of The Lodestar 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. Read by recipient address, 30% of the giving stays in AZ; read by stated purpose it is 28% — 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 +14% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
35 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 19 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, 62% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $538k 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
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY5× · 2021–2025 · $175k · revenue +94%- CICONTINA IMPACT4× · 2021–2025 · $121k · revenue ×13
- TNTHE NISKANEN CENTER INC3× · 2020–2022 · $100k · revenue +115%
Funded once
- CFCORE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $150k
- TBTHE BROOKINGS INSTITUTIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +46%
Indiana University Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $75k · revenue +34%
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.
Making our government work better is a daunting task, and we are a small organization seeking to transform a government that employs millions of civilians and manages trillions of dollars in taxpayer revenue needed to protect public…
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
Pro publica is an independent, non-profit, pulitzer prize-winning newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories. [see continuation on schedule o] we produce…
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
Our mission is to create a fair and inclusive economy where underserved people have quality financial choices and opportunities to improve their economic well-being. we find and help build innovative companies with the potential to reach…
Common future is a network of pioneering leaders across the u.s. and canada who work deeply within their communities to create alternative approaches to business, philanthropy, and investing. we envision an economy that has transitioned…
Common impact's mission is to strengthen the capacity of social change organizations, enabling them to better run and scale their programs. through its partnership with companies, common impact taps into the business skills and expertise…
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…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
Bringing diverse voices together across global sectors, disciplines, and demographics so developments in ai advance positive outcomes for people and society.
We empower directors and transform boards to be future ready.
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,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Independent Sector and the most unlike its peers is Thoreau Farm Trust Inc. 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 25 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
95 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. 95 of the 100 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 SEACHANGE CAPITAL PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER PHOENIX ↗
- Who funds Global Impact ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA JUSTICE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds KEEP OUR REPUBLIC CHARITABLE FUND ↗
- Who funds VALLEY OF THE SUN UNITED WAY ↗
- Who funds CORE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BARROW NEUROLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CIVIC VENTURES DBA COGENERATE ↗
- Who funds CONTINA IMPACT ↗
- Who funds THE NISKANEN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE REPORTERS COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE PRESS ↗
- Who funds THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL VENTURE PARTNERS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF NORTHEAST IOWA ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENT SECTOR ↗
- Who funds CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBILITY AND ETHICS IN WASHINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds THE SYNERGOS INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds Indiana University Foundation ↗
- Who funds ACUMEN FUND INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds STAND UP REPUBLIC FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILANTHROPY WORKSHOP INC DBA FORWARD GLOBAL ↗
- Who funds Valley of the Sun Young Men's Christian Association ↗
- Who funds CalMatters ↗
- Who funds RepresentUs Education Fund ↗
- Who funds PROTECT DEMOCRACY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds The Center for Investigative Reporting formrly Foundation for National Progress ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CDA COLLABORATIVE LEARNING PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED PHILANTHROPY FORUM ↗
- Who funds BALBOA PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds GIVING TUESDAY INC ↗
- Who funds SERVICE YEAR EXCHANGE INC ↗
- Who funds Thoreau Farm Trust 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: Arizona Community Foundation · Virginia G Piper Charitable Trust · Burton Family Foundation · Thunderbirds Charities · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · BHHS Legacy Foundation · Garcia Family Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · New Venture Fund · Impactassetsinc · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · American Express Foundation
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 Lodestar 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.
- Social Finance Inc — 12% of income from government
- The Boys & Girls Aid Society of Oregon — 3% of income from government
- The Bottom Line 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 Lodestar Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Lodestar 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.