· Private foundation
The River Foundation
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FREEDOM OF THE PRESS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| THE BAIL PROJECT | $5,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS USA | $5,000 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| CIVIL LIBERTIES DEFENSE CENTER | $3,000 |
| HEAL PALESTINE | $3,000 |
| PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND | $3,000 |
| SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL USA | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE | $2,000 |
| EARTHJUSTICE | $2,000 |
| 805 UNDOCUFUND | $2,000 |
| RAINFOREST ACTION NETWORK | $2,000 |
| THE ZAYNAB PROJECT | $2,000 |
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, $168k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% of those 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 43% of The River 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, 43% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 30% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +39% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 23 since wound down; 11 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, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $19k 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
- TITHE INNOCENCE PROJECT INC8× · 2017–2024 · $100k · revenue +135%
- SISURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL9× · 2017–2025 · $53k · revenue +141%
WILLIAM J BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $40k · revenue +206%
Funded once
- TATHE AFRICAN AMERICAN POLICY FORUM INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue +499%
- DNDEMOCRACY NOW PRODUCTIONS INCone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue -4%
- FLFirst Look Institute Incone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue -95%
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.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
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.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
To protect the rainforest and advance the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with Indigenous communities in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon Basin's…
To drive transformational adaptation to protect communities across the country from higher seas, stronger storms, and more frequent flooding.
To lead and coordinate the global initiative to address and prevent criminalization, violence, and impunity against indigenous peoples towards strengthening their collectives, solidarity, and actions.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
Using legal advocacy to make advances in science and technology safer for people and the planet.
International Rivers protects rivers and defends the rights of communities that depend on them.
To investigate, research, write, publish, present conferences and teach with respect to global, regional, transboundary, and comparative environmental issues and to make the findings from such activities available to the general public; to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Montgomery Pride United. 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 25 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
59 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. 59 of the 83 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 THE INNOCENCE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM OF THE PRESS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL (USA) ↗
- Who funds WILLIAM J BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds Rainforest Action Network ↗
- Who funds THE BAIL PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Slow Money Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds BARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Civil Liberties Defense Center ↗
- Who funds Pesticide Action Network North America ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE & IMMIGRANT CENTER FOR EDUCATION & LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds THE AFRICAN AMERICAN POLICY FORUM INC ↗
- Who funds 350ORG ↗
- Who funds The Oakland Institute ↗
- Who funds UNRWA USA NATIONAL COMMITTEE INC ↗
- Who funds OPENSECRETS ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds HEAL PALESTINE INC ↗
- Who funds Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) ↗
- Who funds FOOD & WATER WATCH ↗
- Who funds DEMOCRACY NOW PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE ↗
- Who funds First Look Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds Dignity and Power Now ↗
- Who funds MapLight ↗
- Who funds Elevated Access Inc ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN PLAINS LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds THE ALLIANCE FOR SELF-DIRECTED EDUCATION 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 Ford Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Tides Foundation · Santa Barbara Foundation · Rsf Social Finance Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Artemisia Fund · The Yelp Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Weingart Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur 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 River 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 River Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The River 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.