· Private foundation
The Ray Charles Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $98k
- $250k+2 grants · $1.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GRAMMY MUSEUM FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| CITY OF NORTH LAS VEGAS POLICE DEPA | $500,000 |
| JACKIE ROBINSON FOUNDATION INC | $25,000 |
| REID TEMPLE AME CHURCH | $25,000 |
| BOULE FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN | $15,000 |
| PUBLIC COUNSEL'S CHILDREN RIGHTS PR | $12,500 |
| HAMPTON UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| CAL STATE DOMINGUEZ HILLS | $5,000 |
| SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 97% 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.
15 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 3 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, 68% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $518k 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
- MCMOREHOUSE COLLEGE2× · 2017–2020 · $3.0M · revenue +69%
- GMGRAMMY MUSEUM FOUNDATION INC2× · 2023–2024 · $2.0M · revenue +6%
CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER2× · 2019–2023 · $2.0M · revenue +50%
Funded once
- LCLAPD COMMUNITY YOUTH WELFARE EDUCATone grant, 2017 · $1.0M
- NVNEW VILLAGE ARTS INCone grant, 2023 · $250k · revenue +10%
- CPCOMMUNITY PARTNERSgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $150k · revenue +32%
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 bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
Founded in 1902, barton college is a four-year, private, liberal arts college located in wilson, n.c. the barton experience focuses on academic excellence within a wide range of professional and liberal arts programs leading to…
Spelman college, a historically black college and global leader in the education of women of african descent, is dedicated to the academic excellence of its students.
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Mitchell college educates students through a highly individualized educational approach that brings forward each student's potential, reveals their strengths, and fosters personal growth.
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
See schedule othe mission of occidental college is to provide a gifted and diverse group of students with a total educational experience of the highest quality - one that prepares them for leadership in an increasingly complex,…
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Defense Fund and the most unlike its peers is Henry E Huntington Library and Art Gallery. 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 55 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% 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 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.
26 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. 26 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 MOREHOUSE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds GRAMMY MUSEUM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds DILLARD UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds YES2JOBS ↗
- Who funds NEW VILLAGE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN ↗
- Who funds Educating Young Minds ↗
- Who funds The Blind Childrens Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Triumph Foundation ↗
- Who funds JACKIE ROBINSON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SCHOOL ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds Role Models For The Future Foundation ↗
- Who funds MARTIN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HENRY E HUNTINGTON LIBRARY AND ART GALLERY ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BOULE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE HOWARD UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES URBAN LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND ↗
- Who funds River Front Development Corp ↗
- Who funds WELLSPRING ↗
- Who funds LeMoyne-Owen College ↗
- Who funds FULCRUM ARTS ↗
- Who funds Power Access 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: California Community Foundation · Sempra Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Ray Charles 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.
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 Ray Charles Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ray Charles 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.