· Private foundation
The Robert S & Star Pepper 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k5 grants · $75k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $350k
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MARSHALL FOUNDATION FOR COMM HEALTH | $300,000 |
| MERCY FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| POWERHOUSE MINISTRIES | $100,000 |
| THE LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE | $100,000 |
| HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| AMERICA FIRST LEGAL | $25,000 |
| JUDICIAL WATCH | $15,000 |
| HOOVER INSTITUTE | $15,000 |
| PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| HUMAN COALITION | $10,000 |
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, $260k) land where the poverty rate runs at 5%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 0% 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.
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 +73% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 1 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, 52% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $300k 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
- MFMERCY FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $1.0M · revenue +73%
- MRMEDIA RESEARCH CENTER4× · 2019–2023 · $328k · revenue +33%
Conservative Partnership Institute4× · 2018–2021 · $290k · revenue +548%
Funded once
- ACAMERICAN CENTER FOR LAW & JUSTICEone grant, 2017 · $25k
- BCBAYSIDE COVENANT CHURCH GRANITE BAY ROSEVILLE CAone grant, 2022 · $20k
- CAChild Advocates of El Dorado Countyone grant, 2018 · $10k
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.
Iri advances freedom and democracy worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, democratic governance and the rule of law.
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…
Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. Pew Research Center generates a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue and…
To teach and disseminate educational materials to the public.
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 Progress Texas Institute provides research and strategic communications on issues with the ultimate goal of increasing civic engagement.
The Foundations Mission is to enhance our understanding of the Constitution and our constitutional history.
Our mission is to conduct and support research on issues and trends that affect the practice of public affairs and organizations' ability to thrive in a dynamic business environment. Our research provides actionable intelligence on…
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
Pro publica is an independent, non-profit, pulitzer prize-winning newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories. [see continuation on schedule o] we produce…
Dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the u.s. media.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Energy for Mission. 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 30 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) — 3% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 38 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 MERCY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER ↗
- Who funds Conservative Partnership Institute ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds HUMAN COALITION ↗
- Who funds Pacific Legal Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Los Rios Colleges Foundation ↗
- Who funds OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds America First Legal Foundation ↗
- Who funds TEA PARTY PATRIOTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Renewing America Inc ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds EVERYONE MATTERS MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds PRAGER UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT USA INC ↗
- Who funds TAKE NOTE TROUPE INC ↗
- Who funds 916 INK ↗
- Who funds THE UC DAVIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds State Freedom Caucus Network Inc ↗
- Who funds Young America's Foundation ↗
- Who funds SACRAMENTO BALLET ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Energy For Mission ↗
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: Servant Foundation · Dignity Health · Donors Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Robert S & Star Pepper 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.
- Oregon Shakespeare Festival Association 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 Robert S & Star Pepper Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Robert S & Star Pepper 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.