· Private foundation
The Renaissance 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k139 grants · $635k
- $10k–50k71 grants · $1.2M
- $50k–250k12 grants · $958k
- $250k+6 grants · $1.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF OREGON | $405,501 |
| OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY | $379,980 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN | $340,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND | $275,000 |
| PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY | $273,863 |
| Individual grant recipient | $250,000 |
| STAND FOR CHILDREN | $215,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO | $116,298 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN | $82,500 |
| ELIZABETH CITY STATE UNIVERSITY | $68,500 |
| WESTERN OREGON UNIVERSITY | $65,000 |
| OREGON INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY | $65,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON | $62,500 |
| LINFIELD UNIVERSITY | $62,500 |
| SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY | $60,002 |
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 (FY20–24, $288k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 32% 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 +20% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
262 repeat relationships — 189 still active in FY2024, 73 since wound down; 25 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $386k 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
LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE5× · 2020–2024 · $2.7M · revenue +26%
STAND FOR CHILDREN INC5× · 2020–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +1%- UOUNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND5× · 2020–2024 · $657k · revenue +15%
Funded once
- SFSTAND FOR CHILDRENone grant, 2020 · $170k
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +38%
PORTLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +10%
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 University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
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.
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
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…
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…
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…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Trinity university is an independent co-educational university whose mission is excellence in the interrelated areas of teaching, research and services.
The mission of the university is to educate leaders for a global society who are strong in character and judgment, confident in their identity and vocation, and committed to service and justice.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Willamette University and the most unlike its peers is All Ages Music Portland dba Friends of Noise. 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 58 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
222 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. 222 of the 364 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds STAND FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DEPAUL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds OREGON FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds GEORGE FOX UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Linfield University ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Stillman College ↗
- Who funds WARNER PACIFIC UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds PORTLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds REED INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA 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: The Oregon Community Foundation · Meyer Memorial Trust · Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust · Juan Young Trust · OCF Joseph E Weston Public Foundation · The Collins Foundation · The Autzen Foundation · The Jackson Foundation · Rose E Tucker Charitable Trust · The Reser Family Foundation · Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund · Wheeler 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 Renaissance 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.
- Friends of Trees — 100% of income from government
- Klamath Bird Observatory — 100% of income from government
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Artists Repertory Theatre — 48% of income from government
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- Portland YouthBuilders — 35% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- College Dreams Inc — 23% of income from government
- Oregon Food Bank — 21% of income from government
- Willamette Valley Law Project Dba Pcun Foundation — 18% of income from government
- The Freshwater Trust — 17% of income from government
- Warner Pacific University — 14% of income from government
- Ecotrust — 14% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- Bradley Angle — 10% of income from government
- Brandeis University — 9% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Growing Gardens — 6% of income from government
- Portland Community College Foundation Inc — 5% of income from government
- The Contingent — 5% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- Linfield University — 4% of income from government
- Babson College — 3% of income from government
- Bushnell University Fka Northwest Christian University — 3% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- Corban University — 3% of income from government
- Pacific University — 2% of income from government
- George Fox University — 2% of income from government
- Constructing Hope Pre-Apprenticeship Program — 2% of income from government
- Lewis & Clark College — 2% of income from government
- Casa for Children Inc — 2% of income from government
- Chess for Success — 2% of income from government
- Willamette University — 1% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 1% of income from government
- University of Portland — 1% of income from government
- All Ages Music Portland dba Friends of Noise — 1% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 1% of income from government
- Portland Art Museum — 1% of income from government
- Reed Institute — 1% of income from government
- Bentley University — 1% of income from government
- Oregon Public Broadcasting — 1% of income from government
- Lesley University — 1% of income from government
- William Temple House — 0% of income from government
- The Campbell Institute — 0% of income from government
- Oregon Business Academy — 0% of income from government
- Trinity College — 0% of income from government
- Amherst College Trustees — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America Inc — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Renaissance Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Renaissance 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.