· Private foundation
The Phase Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k38 grants · $137k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $13k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $150k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Wilmer Eye Institute (Fund for Johns Hopkins Med) | $150,000 |
| SAMARITAN'S PURSE | $13,000 |
| ARMENIA SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $8,000 |
| PROJECT ANIMAL AID | $8,000 |
| SECOND CHANCE WILDLIFE CENTER | $8,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $8,000 |
| PARTNER FOR SURGERY | $8,000 |
| BIG LIFE FOUNDATION USA | $5,000 |
| HOUSING UNLIMITED | $5,000 |
| EASTERN SHORE CHAPEL (CHAPEL PANTRY) | $5,000 |
| HORIZON DAY CAMP | $5,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF THE CUMBERLANDS | $5,000 |
| WOODWORKERS FOR CHILDREN CHARITY | $5,000 |
| HILLSDALE COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY NATIONAL CAPITAL AREA | $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 (FY17–25, $233k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 49% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 9% of The Phase 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 MD; read by stated purpose it is 52% — 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.
94 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2025, 68 since wound down; 13 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $28k 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
- SCSECOND CHANCE WILDLIFE CENTER INC9× · 2017–2025 · $76k · revenue +76%
- PFPartner for Surgery Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $70k · revenue +112%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF THE CUMBERLANDS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $48k · revenue +158%
Funded once
- WEWILMER EYE INSTITUTEone grant, 2022 · $114k
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue +46%
- ARAMERICAN RED CROSS OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL REGIONone grant, 2021 · $8k
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.
We are making maryland healthier by connecting residents to insurance and care, educating the community about healthier living, and advocating a more equitable health care system.
Animal care sanctuary's lifesaving mission as a no kill organization envisions a community that promotes turning compassion into action for companion animals by: 1.) adopting healthy pet companions into loving homes. 2.) promoting the…
The mission of upmc western maryland is to serve our community by providing outstanding patient care and to shape tomorrow's health system through clinical & technological innovation, research and education.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland, school of medicine, administrative support services are provided to the physician practices of the university of maryland, including but not limited to information technology,…
Our goal is to sustainably improve animal welfare, provide veterinary care, and improve veterinary education globally. in order to achieve this goal, we work in over 10 countries, across 5 continents, supporting local people and animals,…
Health care for the homeless works to end homelessness through racially equitable health care, housing and advocacy in partnership with those of us who have experienced it.
We extend god's care through the ministry of physical, mental and spiritual healing.
The organization provides medical care to improve, maintain, and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.
Plan, develop, coordinate, direct and manage an integrated healthcare system.
The organization provides medical care to improve, maintain, and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.
Calverthealth medical center provides quality inpatient and ambulatory health care to the people of southern maryland that is accessible, cost-effective and compassionate. chmc works in partnership with the community to improve the health…
The organization's mission is to build partnerships to enhance compassionate care globally. we are dedicated to improving access to hospice and palliative care worldwide.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Family Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Stronghold 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 29 years old; the field is 14. 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 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
117 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. 117 of the 162 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 SECOND CHANCE WILDLIFE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Partner for Surgery Inc ↗
- Who funds HOPE HOUSE ↗
- Who funds A WIDER CIRCLE INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF THE CUMBERLANDS INC ↗
- Who funds SUBURBAN HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Colonial Williamsburg Foundation ↗
- Who funds WANADA AUTOMOBILE DEALER EDUCATION INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSING UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds BIG LIFE FOUNDATION USA ↗
- Who funds RED WIGGLER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ANIMALAID ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds STRATFORD HALL ↗
- Who funds CALVARY WOMEN'S SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds BEREA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE VETERINARY CARE ↗
- Who funds MARYLAND ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds RX DRUG ACCESS PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds HOPE AND A HOME ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds HOLY CROSS HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SUNRISE DAY CAMPS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds WESTMINSTER INGLESIDE PRESBYTERIAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds QUOTIDIAN THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON EAR INC ↗
- Who funds THE MONTGOMERY COUNTY COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER WASHINGTON EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds ARMENIA SCHOOL 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: Greater Washington Community Foundation · The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · Nora Roberts Foundation · Clark-Winchcole Foundation · William S Abell Foundation Inc · United Way of the National Capital Area · John Edward Fowler Memorial Foundation · Dimick Foundation John M Lynham Jr Trustee · Philip L Graham Fund co Graham Holdings Company · Walter a Bloedorn Foundation · The Carl M Freeman Foundation Inc · Sidgmore Family 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 Phase 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.
- Bethesda Cares Inc — 100% of income from government
- Fellowship Place Inc — 66% of income from government
- The Petey Greene Program Inc — 29% of income from government
- The Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless Inc — 19% of income from government
- Prince George's Child Resource Centerinc — 17% of income from government
- Community Clinic Inc — 16% of income from government
- Als Therapy Development Foundation Inc — 8% of income from government
- A Wider Circle Inc — 6% of income from government
- Cornerstone Montgomery — 3% of income from government
- Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research Inc — 3% of income from government
- Maryland Zoological Society Inc — 3% of income from government
- Northwest Hospital Center Inc — 2% of income from government
- Franciscan Center Inc — 2% 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 Phase Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Phase 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.