· Private foundation
The Palmer 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k3 grants · $75k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $200k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CENTRE VOLUNTEERS IN MEDICINE | $750,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500,000 |
| WSU ADVANCE FUND | $125,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $75,000 |
| DISCOVERY SPACE | $30,000 |
| WEST MORRIS AREA YMCA | $30,000 |
| WORLD WILDLIFE FUND | $15,000 |
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 (FY20–21, $150k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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.
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 +62% since the first grant, against -12% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 4 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $245k 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
- DSDISCOVERY SPACE OF CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA INC5× · 2019–2024 · $205k · revenue +62%
- HFHOUSING FAMILIES INC2× · 2020–2021 · $150k · revenue +444%
- MRMolalla River Academy3× · 2019–2021 · $113k · revenue +60%
Funded once
- PSPENNSYLVANIS STATE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2020 · $1.0M
- UBUNIVERSITY BAPIST BRETHREN CHURCHone grant, 2021 · $250k
- CCCENTRE COUNTY COMMUNICATION FDNone grant, 2019 · $100k
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 mission is "to understand the natural world and inspire everyone to care for it." the academy implements its mission through understanding the diversity of life; developing and applying science to protect the environment; and informing…
To create a space in our communities through education and cultural experiences that celebrate the joy of discovery and entertainment.
Lake erie nature & science center educates and inspires each of us to understand, appreciate, and take responsibility for our natural world. serving more than 100,000 people each year with animal exhibits and programs, planetarium shows,…
Riverbend's purpose is to foster an awareness, appreciation, and understanding of our total environment through educational programming. by growing both the love of nature and environmental literacy, we aim to inspire action that…
A science center based museum providing hands-on educational experiences to all people through interactive exhibits, school presentations and video conferencing nationwide, youth and adults learn more about living through science facts.
The museum's mission statement is "turn on the science: inspire learning. inform policy. improve lives."
Our mission is to bring science to life and lives to science. through inquiry-based science learning experiences, we champion the next generation and help build a technical and scientific workforce. see schedule o.
Promoting scholarly and public understanding of history of science, technology and medicine.
To empower a constellation of environmental organizations working to care for our earth.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
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…
The mission of the rochester museum and science center is to create a better world through inspiring curiosity, exploration, and engagement across history, science, culture, and the natural world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is West Morris Area Ymca and the most unlike its peers is World Wildlife Fund Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 18 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 CENTRE VOLUNTEERS IN MEDICINE ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY SPACE OF CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSING FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds Molalla River Academy ↗
- Who funds West Morris Area YMCA ↗
- Who funds CENTRE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS IN THE HEART OF PA ↗
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: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Palmer 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.
- Housing Families Inc — 12% of income from government
- Molalla River Academy — 2% of income from government
- West Morris Area Ymca — 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 Palmer Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Palmer 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.