· Public charity
The Ruckus Society
To provide environmental, human rights, and social justice organizers with the tools, training, and support needed to achieve their goals through the strategic use of creative, nonviolent direct action.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Center for Third World Org | $200,000 |
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 (FY20–21, $240k) land where the poverty rate runs at 26%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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.
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 +125% since the first grant, against +39% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 2 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 FY2024, 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
Center for Third World Organizing2× · 2021–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +125%- SCSOUTHERN CONSERVATION PARTNERS INC2× · 2020–2021 · $100k · revenue +83%
- TCTHE COME UP PROJECT2× · 2020–2021 · $80k
Funded once
HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INCone grant, 2021 · $832k · revenue -27%- SLSoulShifting LLCone grant, 2020 · $200k
- TFTKO Farming LLCone grant, 2020 · $155k
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.
To empower frontline communities to lead nature-based solutions that advance climate justice, ecosystem restoration, and resilient livelihoods through connecting locally-led initiatives to funding, markets, and technical support.
Plan and develop resource conservation and development programs
Taproot Earth works with communities to support strategies around the use of water, energy and land.
Community Agroecology Network's (CAN) mission is to develop a network comprised of rural communities in Latin America and U.S. consumers that work together to support self-sufficiency and sustainable farming practices.
To restore the environment and the economy.
Protect and enhance watersheds
Global Forest Generation restores and protects forest ecosystems in partnership with grassroots leaders and local communities across vast landscapes which play a critical role in preserving water, protecting biodiversity, storing carbon,…
Growing a local food system where the health of people and planet come first
Bountiful Cities is the urban agriculture resource in Asheville. We share and support agriculture resources and skills centered in equity, inclusion and economic viability. Bountiful Cities works collaboratively investing in re-development…
Promoting inclusive and sustainable rural communities in Alabama through grassroots organizing, leadership development, and civic engagement.
Revive The Roots cultivates an inclusive environment free of judgment and biases where people and the environment thrive through sustainable practices, community building, and education
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Operation Restoration and the most unlike its peers is Center for Third World Organizing. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 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. 9 of the 16 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 Center for Third World Organizing ↗
- Who funds HIGHLANDER RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK OAKS CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE RENEWABLE LIVING ↗
- Who funds Operation Spring Plant ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN CONSERVATION PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds NATURES GARDEN FOR VICTORY AND PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds THUNDER VALLEY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COR ↗
- Who funds OPERATION RESTORATION ↗
- Who funds CLINTON COMMUNITY CHRISTIAN CORP ↗
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: Center for Third World Organizing · The Praxis Project Inc · Impactassetsinc · Movement Strategy Center · Common Counsel Foundation · Rsf Social Finance Inc · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Robert Rauschenberg Foundation · Tides Foundation · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Ruckus Society 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 Ruckus Society?
Find your warmest path to The Ruckus Society 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.