· Private foundation
The Oprah Winfrey 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k7 grants · $125k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $935k
- $250k+10 grants · $22M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $8,919,077 |
| OW LEADERSHIP ACADEMY FOUNDATION | $8,882,411 |
| US DREAM ACADEMY | $947,972 |
| HERRENDORF FAMILY FOUNDATION | $925,000 |
| HERRENDORF FAMILY FOUNDATION | $910,000 |
| HERRENDORF FAMILY FOUNDATION | $524,900 |
| TELLURIDE COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS | $500,000 |
| OMPRAKASH FOUNDATION-HUMANITY CREW | $270,000 |
| MINDFULLNESS LEADER NFP | $250,000 |
| NATIONAL CARES MENTORING MOVEMENT INC | $250,000 |
| HERRENDORF FAMILY FOUNDATION | $210,000 |
| MINNIE'S FOOD PANTRY INC | $200,000 |
| MANA MAOLI | $150,000 |
| THE HARLEM SCHOOL OF THE ARTS INC | $100,000 |
| JOHNNETTA BETSCH COLE LEGACY FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $3.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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 8% of The Oprah Winfrey Charitable 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, 54% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 16% — 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.
22 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 8 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9.7M 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
- TOTHE OPRAH WINFREY LEADERSHIP ACADEMY FOUNDATION5× · 2018–2022 · $34M · revenue +202% · 95% of their budget
THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION3× · 2018–2020 · $20M · revenue +27%- UDUS DREAM ACADEMY INC5× · 2018–2024 · $6.8M · revenue +41% · 46% of their budget
Funded once
- MCMOREHOUSE COLLEGEone grant, 2020 · $6.5M · revenue -13%
- RCRON CLARK ACADEMY INCone grant, 2018 · $5.0M · revenue -9% · 26% of their budget
- MZMOUNT ZION BAPTIST CHURCHone grant, 2020 · $2.1M
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.
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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 ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
The leadership foundation, inc. (the foundation), established in 1990, is the mechanism by which iwf members advance the next generation of women leaders. the foundation accelerates the careers of top-performing women by offering…
Our mission is to shape the future of finance by developing leaders whose innovation, investment excellence, and human-centered leadership advance the industry and its adjacent sectors.
The mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.
The afp foundation shall strive to enhance philanthropy and volunteerism through programs, education, and research.
Spark lasting social justice change, mobilizing people, capital, & expertise for a fair brooklyn.
The mission of the international women's forum is to advance women's leadership worldwide. iwf takes direct action to achieve our mission in three important ways. connect: our convenings provide networking and cutting-edge content…
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…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative and the most unlike its peers is Ordinary Towards Extraordinary Foundation 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 27 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
71 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. 71 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 THE OPRAH WINFREY LEADERSHIP ACADEMY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds US DREAM ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds MOREHOUSE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds RON CLARK ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds HALO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Herrendorf Family Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Rush University Medical Center ↗
- Who funds WHITAKER PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds National Cares Mentoring Movement Inc ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE SOLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds La Paz Global ↗
- Who funds THE PITTSBURGH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WATTS HEALTHCARE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds MAUI HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds MISS PORTER'S SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC FEDERATION INC ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds SCREEN ACTORS GUILD-AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TELEVISION AND RADIO ARTISTS FOUND ↗
- Who funds FLAMBOYAN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MINNIES FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN WOMEN RISING ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF NEW JERSEY ↗
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: Pledgeling Foundation · Wasserman Foundation · The Ford Foundation · California Community Foundation · Tides Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Chicago Community Trust · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · Boston Foundation Inc · Silicon Valley Community 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 Oprah Winfrey 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.
- Center for Urban Families Inc — 36% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% 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 Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Oprah Winfrey 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.