· Private foundation
The Reams Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $11k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $50k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.1M
- $250k+2 grants · $920k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Ed Choice | $460,000 |
| Stand Together Chamber of Commerce Inc | $460,000 |
| Institute for Justice | $130,000 |
| Foundation for Economic Education | $120,000 |
| State Policy Network | $100,000 |
| Libertas Network | $100,000 |
| Mackinac Center for Public Policy | $100,000 |
| Goldwater Institute | $100,000 |
| Fund for American Studies | $70,000 |
| Certell Inc | $60,000 |
| Atlas Network | $60,000 |
| Leadership Institute | $60,000 |
| Reason | $50,000 |
| Students for Liberty | $50,000 |
| CATO Institute | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 51% of your 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.
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.
27 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- EIEdChoice Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $2.8M · revenue +43%
- STSTAND TOGETHER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE INC8× · 2018–2025 · $2.5M · revenue +240%
- MCMACKINAC CENTER9× · 2017–2025 · $990k · revenue +64%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $40k
- TFThink Freely Mediaone grant, 2017 · $20k
- BOBill of Rights Institutegraduatedone grant, 2018 · $20k · revenue +233%
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 american enterprise institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise. aei pursues these ideals through independent thinking and the…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
To educate the public on constitutional issues and public policy matters. We are dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, peace through strength, limited government, free enterprise, and the values embodied in the Declaration of…
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
The manhattan institute is a community of scholars, journalists, activists, and civic leaders dedicated to advancing opportunity, individual liberty, and the rule of law in america and its great cities.
Competitive enterprise institute (cei) is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government. we believe that consumers are best helped not by government regulation but by being…
The r street institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public-policy research organization ("think tank"). our mission is to engage in policy research and outreach to promote free markets and limited, effective government. (continued on…
To provide accurate, objective information and analysis on international strategic issues for legislators, diplomats, foreign affairs analysts, international business leaders, economists, the military, defense commentators, journalists,…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The institute supports and provides research regarding issues of public policy having effects on the rights, freedom, security, and quality of life of american citizens.
Iri advances freedom and democracy worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, democratic governance and the rule of law.
To advance economic and social liberties and a free enterprise society through strategic litigation, training, communication, activism and research. in addition, the center will train law students, lawyers and policy activists in the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Stand Together Chamber of Commerce Inc and the most unlike its peers is Family Paws Rescue. 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 37 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.
36 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. 36 of the 51 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 EdChoice Inc ↗
- Who funds STAND TOGETHER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE INC ↗
- Who funds MACKINAC CENTER ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds Foundation for Economic Education Inc ↗
- Who funds BARRY GOLDWATER INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds STATE POLICY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty ↗
- Who funds Libertas Network ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds CERTELL INC ↗
- Who funds THE FUND FOR AMERICAN STUDIES ↗
- Who funds Mercatus Center Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY ↗
- Who funds Institute for Humane Studies ↗
- Who funds STUDENTS FOR LIBERTY INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS POLICY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY LIFESTARS ↗
- Who funds VerdeCares Inc ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ALLEGAN COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Bill of Rights Institute ↗
- Who funds GOLF FORE AFRICA INC ↗
- Who funds HERITAGE FUND - THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF BARTHOLOMEW COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PAWS RESCUE ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN MARITIME MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds ALPHA OMICRON PI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Reigning Grace Ranch ↗
- Who funds Almost Home ↗
- Who funds DRAWING CHILDREN INTO READING ↗
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: Donors Trust Inc · The Armstrong Foundation · Atlas Economic Research Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc
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 Reams 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 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.