· Private foundation
Sunstone 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 FY2022–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k80 grants · $231k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $409k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $306k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP | $173,759 |
| BOOK FAIRIES INC | $77,185 |
| GOVERNORS EARLY LITERACY FOUNDATION | $55,000 |
| READING IS FUNDAMENTAL PITTSBURG | $35,000 |
| TREEHOUSE | $35,000 |
| LAMBERT HOUSE | $29,612 |
| BAND TOGETHER | $25,000 |
| EVERYONES DREAM COME TRUE | $25,000 |
| PROMISING PAGES | $25,000 |
| SPECIAL OLYMPICS NORTH CAROLINA INC | $25,000 |
| SHADOW PROJECT | $25,000 |
| NORTH CAROLINA BUSINESS LEADERS FOR EDUCATION | $25,000 |
| READING QUEST | $25,000 |
| WHERE LOVE GROWS INC | $20,000 |
| PEAK EDUCATION | $20,000 |
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 (FY22–24, $328k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 35% 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 +24% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
46 repeat relationships — 46 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 31 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, 48% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $496k 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
- BFBOOK FAIRIES INC3× · 2022–2024 · $131k · revenue +86%
SPECIAL OLYMPICS NORTH CAROLINA INC2× · 2023–2024 · $50k · revenue +24%- LFLITTLE FREE LIBRARY3× · 2022–2024 · $47k · revenue +16%
Funded once
- RKREADY KIDS FOR SCHOOLone grant, 2023 · $18k · revenue -33% · 80% of their budget
- IHI HAVE A DREAM FOUNDATION - LOS ANGELESgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $17k · revenue +303%
- LALIVE AGAIN FRESNOgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $17k · revenue +119%
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.
Support childhood literacy
Empower families to foster empathy, curiosity, and self-confidence in their young children through the joy of reading together every day. Provide new, quality, mirror and window books to babies and young children.
Bookspring's mission is to build early literacy in children and families through healthcare, education, and the community. Please visit our website at www.bookspring.org for up-to-date information.
Reading results partners with schools to support students from systemically excluded communities in becoming successful readers. we believe that literacy is a basic human right, and we work to increase access and break down barriers…
To give young children a foundation for success by incorporating books into pediatric care and encouraging families to read aloud together.
Between the pages empowers children to discover a life-long love of reading using books as tools to immerse economically disadvantaged and avid readers in an engaging recreation of their favorite books, fostering literacy, creative play,…
To equip students for success through the power of reading.Readers 2 Leaders envisions a world where all students have equitable opportunities to thrive as readers and leaders, but it will require energy and collaboration from across the…
Read to a child's mission is to foster a love of reading, improve literacy skills and support socio-emotional well-being in students from under-resourced communities.
To promote child literacy rate
Founded nbsp;in nbsp;bronx nbsp;ny nbsp;start nbsp;lighthouse nbsp;is nbsp;a nbsp;501(c)3 nbsp;nonprofit nbsp;dedicated nbsp;to nbsp;advancing nbsp;childhood nbsp;literacy nbsp;through nbsp;a nbsp;social nbsp;justice nbsp;lense nbsp;start…
Year-round, one-to-one tutoring program provided at Title 1 schools to students not at grade-level proficiency in reading. Tutors are area teens recruited and trained to deliver reading support.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Read and Feed and the most unlike its peers is New Hope New Beginnings. 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 19 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) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% 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.
109 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 109 of the 134 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 STOREHOUSE FOR TEACHERS D/B/A THE EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds BOOK FAIRIES INC ↗
- Who funds GOVERNOR'S EARLY LITERACY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds LITTLE FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds KID SMART ↗
- Who funds THE SHADOW PROJECT ↗
- Who funds READING IS FUNDAMENTAL PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds TREEHOUSE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds READING QUEST ↗
- Who funds LAMBERT HOUSE ↗
- Who funds Make Way For Books ↗
- Who funds Promising Pages Inc ↗
- Who funds First Gen Success ↗
- Who funds WHERE LOVE GROWS INC ↗
- Who funds ASSISTANCE LEAGUE OF LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds EVERY CHILD A READER IN ESCAMBIA INC ECARE ↗
- Who funds JERSEY CITY CONNECTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds EVERYONES DREAM COME TRUE ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA BUSINESS LEADERS FOR EDUC ↗
- Who funds BAND TOGETHER ↗
- Who funds THE ALICE AYCOCK POE CENTER FOR HEALTH EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds READ AND FEED ↗
- Who funds READ TO SUCCEED ASHEVILLE ↗
- Who funds DEEP CENTER INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Peak Education ↗
- Who funds BORN TO READ INC ↗
- Who funds Children's Literacy Center Inc ↗
- Who funds READY KIDS FOR SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds I HAVE A DREAM FOUNDATION - LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds LIVE AGAIN FRESNO ↗
- Who funds FOSTER THE LOVE LOUISIANAINC ↗
- Who funds Time Out Youth Inc ↗
- Who funds PENCIL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IDEAS FOR US INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG BLACK AND LIT ↗
- Who funds A GIFT FOR TEACHING INC ↗
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: Dollar General Literacy Foundation · Nora Roberts Foundation · Foundation for the Carolinas · The Gap Foundation · The Leon Levine Foundation · Truist Foundation Inc · Carolina Hurricanes Foundation · Triangle Community Foundation Inc · WK Kellogg Foundation · Reading Is Fundamental Inc · John William Pope Foundation · The Grable 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 Sunstone 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.
- Ideas for Us Inc — 35% of income from government
- The Shadow Project — 8% of income from government
- Smart Reading — 3% of income from government
- Booksmiles a New Jersey Nonprofit Corporation — 1% 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 Sunstone Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sunstone 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.