· Public charity
The Michael Phelps Foundation
The organization's mission is to promote healthy, active lives, especially for children, primarily by expanding opportunities for participation in the sport of swimming.
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.
The 4 grants below total $540,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $588,885 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $48,885 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $16k
- $250k+1 grant · $510k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA | $510,000 |
| GIRL SCOUTS OF MAINE | $16,000 |
| NATIONAL DROWNING PREVENTIVE ALLIANCE | $7,500 |
| SPECIAL OLYMPICS ARIZONA | $6,500 |
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 (FY19–22, $70k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +32% since the first grant, against +6% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 12 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA8× · 2017–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +62%
- SOSPECIAL OLYMPICS INC5× · 2018–2023 · $192k · revenue +38%
- JCJOSHUA COLLINGSWORTH MEMORIAL FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2019 · $40k · revenue +138%
Funded once
- TBThe Brighter Days Foundationone grant, 2018 · $265k · revenue -23%
- TTTIM TEBOW FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue +416%
- CKCASA KANE COUNTYone grant, 2019 · $20k · revenue -13%
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 inspire and enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens
The boys & girls clubs of the greater chippewa valley's mission is to inspire and enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible, caring citizens.
To inspire and enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as caring, responsible, productive citizens.
To inspire and enable all young people to reach their full potential as caring, productive, and responsible citizens.
To enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.
To inspire and enable all young people, especially those most in need of our services, to realize and develop their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens in a global society.
The mission of the boys & girls club of palm beach county is to inspire and assist all young people, especially those who need them most, to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
To nurture, educate and enrich children and youth for life-long success.
Youth health and social, educational, and character development of youth.
To provide support for the boys & girls clubs, inc. which provides various educational and recreational services to youth.
To enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.
To inspire and enable youth ages 6 to 18 to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens. the boys and girls clubs of greater st. louis provides recreational, athletic and educational facilities for youth in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Boys and Girls Clubs of the Blue Ridge Inc and the most unlike its peers is Ross Powers Foundation Dba Level Field Fund. 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 28 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 28% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 19% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 35 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 BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds The Brighter Days Foundation ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS INC ↗
- Who funds ROSS POWERS FOUNDATION DBA LEVEL FIELD FUND ↗
- Who funds TIM TEBOW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds JOSHUA COLLINGSWORTH MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAZARUS HOUSE ↗
- Who funds LIVING CLASSROOMS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds National Drowning Prevention Alliance ↗
- Who funds THE EDUCATION FOUNDATION OF BALTIMORE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds THE MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION IN FORSYTH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds TRICITY FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF MAINE ↗
- Who funds USA Swimming Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds CASA KANE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Valley of the Sun Young Men's Christian Association ↗
- Who funds PAULYD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS ARIZONA INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEMOURS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAL'S ALL-STAR ANGEL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE JARRETT PAYTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Boys & Girls Clubs of Deep East Texas ↗
- Who funds GREENMOUNT WEST COMMUNITY CENTER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF AUSTIN AND TRAVIS COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF FULLERTON INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL FLORIDA INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF THE BLUE RIDGE INC ↗
- Who funds FOX VALLEY SPECIAL RECREATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Special Children's Charities ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS ILLINOIS ↗
- Who funds The ZAC Foundation for Children's Safety ↗
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: Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley · The Hope and Grace Charitable Foundation · Ft Cares Foundation · Northwestern Memorial HealthCare Group · Boys & Girls Clubs of America · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Chubb Charitable Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund
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 Michael Phelps 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.
- Living Classrooms Foundation — 7% of income from government
- The Nemours Foundation — 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 Michael Phelps Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Michael Phelps 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.