· Public charity
The Posse Foundation Inc
The posse foundation, founded in 1989, identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential who may be overlooked by traditional college selection processes.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 19 grants below total $2,300,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,877,608 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $577,608 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- $50k–250k18 grants · $2.0M
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY | $300,000 |
| CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY | $200,000 |
| CENTRE COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| BARD COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES | $100,000 |
| DAVIDSON COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| CORNELL COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| ST OLAF COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| MACALESTER COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL OF THE ARTS | $100,000 |
| WHITMAN COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| PURDUE UNIVERSITY | $100,000 |
| WILLIAM & MARY | $100,000 |
| RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 74% of your 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 +42% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 5 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, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $600k 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
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY7× · 2018–2024 · $675k · revenue +44%- LULEHIGH UNIVERSITY5× · 2018–2022 · $500k · revenue +53%
Davidson College6× · 2017–2024 · $500k · revenue +42%
Funded once
- CICALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTSone grant, 2021 · $500k · revenue +12%
- RCRhodes Collegeone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue -20%
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.
Endicott college offers students a vibrant academic environment that remains true to its founding principle of integrating professional and liberal arts with experiential learning. for more information see schedule o.
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
Dickinson college provides a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship
To educate students in the liberal arts through free inquiry and the open exchange of ideas.when grinnell college framed its charter in the iowa territory of the united states in 1846, it set forth a mission to educate its students "for…
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Hillsdale college is a private liberal arts college with approximately 1,500 students. founded in 1844, the college remains, in the words of its articles of association, "grateful to god for the inestimable blessings resulting from the…
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Mcdaniel college is a diverse student-centered community committed to excellence in the liberal arts & sciences and professional studies with careful mentoring and attention to the individual. mcdaniel changes lives. we challenge students…
Enriched by the lasallian catholic heritage, saint mary's university of minnesota awakens, nurtures, and empowers learners to ethical lives of service and leadership.
Wesleyan university is dedicated to providing an education in liberal arts by building a diverse, energetic community of students, faculty, and staff who value independence of mind and generosity of spirit. see additional description in…
Dartmouth College educates the most promising students and prepares them for a lifetime of learning and of responsible leadership, through a faculty dedicated to teaching and the creation of knowledge.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Macalester College and the most unlike its peers is Pomona College. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 80 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) — 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 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.
28 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. 28 of the 36 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 CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LEHIGH UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds Davidson College ↗
- Who funds VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Wellesley College ↗
- Who funds LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CORNELL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MOLLOY UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Rhodes College ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MACALESTER COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ST OLAF COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BRYN MAWR COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Middlebury College ↗
- Who funds POMONA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF THE SMITH COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FRANKLIN & MARSHALL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF WHITMAN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds PRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES ↗
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 Ayco Charitable Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 Posse Foundation Inc 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.
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Brandeis University — 8% of income from government
- Lewis & Clark College — 2% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 0% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 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.