· Private foundation
The North Star Charitable 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
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $297k
- $50k–250k27 grants · $2.1M
- $250k+14 grants · $13M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION | $4,000,000 |
| THE COLORADO COLLEGE | $1,559,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,250,000 |
| CAPITAL AREA FOOD BANK | $1,100,000 |
| FEEL GOOD ACTION | $1,000,000 |
| SEATTLE AQUARIUM SOCIETY | $801,000 |
| CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL | $570,000 |
| MALALA FUND | $550,000 |
| UNITED SERVICES ORGANIZATION (USO) | $500,000 |
| NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE | $350,000 |
| EVERYBODY MATTERS | $300,000 |
| ARMAND HAMMER MUSEUM OF ART AND CULTURAL | $276,596 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF THE ROARING FORK | $250,000 |
| CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY | $250,000 |
| NORTHWEST HARVEST EMM | $200,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $2.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 87% 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 +42% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
52 repeat relationships — 37 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 18 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.4M 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
PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC7× · 2017–2024 · $16M · revenue +12%- TCTHE COLORADO COLLEGE7× · 2017–2024 · $4.6M · revenue +39%
- EWEMMA WILLARD SCHOOL5× · 2018–2023 · $4.3M · revenue +68%
Funded once
- BBBUILDING BRIDGES ACROSS THE RIVER INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +40%
- NJNEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYone grant, 2022 · $100k
- SASEATTLE ART MUSEUMgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +28%
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 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 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 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.
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 peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
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 purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
The association of washington cities builds connections between our state's diverse cities and towns, while providing our members with the support needed to thrive through delivery of data-driven education, nationally recognized pooling…
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Aspen Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Pedigree Foundation. 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 33 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 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
69 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. 69 of the 95 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 PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds THE COLORADO COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds EMMA WILLARD SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL AREA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds EVERYBODY MATTERS INC ↗
- Who funds THE MALALA FUND ↗
- Who funds THE SEATTLE AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Feel Good Action ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WILDERNESS INQUIRY INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST HARVEST EMM ↗
- Who funds THE HOTCHKISS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MONTANA WILDERNESS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL OUTDOOR LEADERSHIP SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds AMIGOS OF COSTA RICA INC ↗
- Who funds HOMEFRONT INC ↗
- Who funds COLORADO ROCKY MOUNTAIN SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FAMILY LAW CASA OF KING COUNTY ↗
- Who funds ScholarCHIPS Inc ↗
- Who funds GENERATION HOPE ↗
- Who funds ARMAND HAMMER MUSEUM OF ART AND CULTURAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ALIGHT ↗
- Who funds FISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE BAIL PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds WILD MONTANA ACTION FUND ↗
- Who funds William & Mary Foundation ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF KING COUNTY ↗
- Who funds TREEHOUSE ↗
- Who funds MAMATOTO VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF CENTRAL & EASTERN NC INC ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
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: Aspen Community Foundation · Colorado Gives Foundation · The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · Seattle Foundation · The Thrift Shop · Gates Family Foundation · Rose Community Foundation · El Pomar Foundation · Manaus · The Magnolia Charitable Foundation · The Thendara Foundation · The Denver 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 North Star Charitable 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.
- Homefront Inc — 9% 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 North Star Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The North Star Charitable 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.