· Private foundation
The Optima Charitable 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LINC | $5,000 |
| FOOD BANK OF NEW YORK CITY | $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 (FY23–24, $14k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, 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.
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 +16% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 1 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, 50% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- TATHE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS5× · 2018–2023 · $149k · revenue +67%
- PBPALM BEACH DAY ACADEMY INC4× · 2020–2023 · $70k · revenue +96%
- GAGlades Academy Foundation Inc5× · 2018–2023 · $40k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- TFTHE FOUNDATION FOR AIDS RESEARCHone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue -21%
- BPBASCOM PALMER EYE INSTITUTEone grant, 2021 · $10k
- WPWEST PALM BEACH FOOTBALL CLUBone grant, 2023 · $10k
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.
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
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.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
The board adopted mission statement is: nyu langone hospitals (the "hospital") will operate with new york university's medical schools a health system ("nyu langone health") devoted to excellence in patient care, education and research. in…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Center for Learning Disabilities Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Foundation for Aids Research. 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 42 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 10% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 42 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 AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds New Wave Artist Residency Inc ↗
- Who funds PALM BEACH DAY ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds Glades Academy Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE CHAPIN SCHOOL LTD ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK-PRESBYTERIAN FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE ANIMAL MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR AIDS RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds EMPIRE DRAGONS NYC INC ↗
- Who funds THE HETRICK-MARTIN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds STUDENT ADVOCACY INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR LEARNING DISABILITIES INC ↗
- Who funds LITERACY INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK FOR NEW YORK CITY ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS ↗
- Who funds THE BOYS' CLUB OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds PANCREATIC CANCER ACTION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds NEW HOPE CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CITYMEALS-ON-WHEELS ↗
- Who funds PROJECT PURPLE INC ↗
- Who funds STARLIGHT CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GLEN COVE HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds SOLVING KIDS' CANCER INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE UPPER EAST SIDE HISTORIC DISTRICTS INC ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITIES INC ↗
- Who funds Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies ↗
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: The Bessemer Giving Fund · Jewish Communal Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Network for Good · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift 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 Optima 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- New Hope Charities Inc — 0% of income from government
- Palm Beach Day Academy 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 Optima Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Optima 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.