· Private foundation
The Rust Family 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
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $245k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITA | $30,000 |
| CONNECTICUT HUMANE SOCIETY | $30,000 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $25,000 |
| BLOOD CANCER UNITED | $15,000 |
| SAVE THE CHILDREN | $15,000 |
| ASPCA | $10,000 |
| MARCH OF DIMES | $10,000 |
| CONNECTICUT FOODSHARE | $10,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $10,000 |
| WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT | $10,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HORSES | $10,000 |
| FAIRFIELD COUNTY'S COMMUNITY FOUNDA | $10,000 |
| OPERATION HOPE | $10,000 |
| WATER FOR GOOD | $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 (FY19–25, $19k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +42% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
67 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 58 since wound down; 10 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, 47% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $130k 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
- CHCONNECTICUT HUMANE SOCIETY8× · 2017–2025 · $46k · revenue +81%
- NYNew York University3× · 2018–2022 · $43k · revenue +59%
- TATHE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND5× · 2019–2024 · $37k · revenue +46%
Funded once
- ASAMERICAN SOCIETY UN OF HAIFAone grant, 2024 · $16k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA RESEARCH FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue +54%
- TGThe George Washington Universityone grant, 2020 · $14k · revenue +22%
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 mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
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…
Education and Research
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
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.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
To educate students to be ethical and socially responsible leaders in a global community.
The university of virginia investment management company (uvimco) is organized to invest funds on behalf of the rector and visitors of the university of virginia (the university or uva) and university-associated organizations (uaos).
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Wpi transforms lives, turns knowledge into action to confront global challenges, and revolutionizes stem through distinctive and inclusive education, projects and research. (http://www.wpi.edu/about/mission.html)
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Manhattan university is an independent catholic instituion of higher learning that embraces qualified men and women of all faiths, cultures, and traditions. the mission of manhattan university is to provide a contemporary, person-centered…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Bioregions Program Inc. 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 53 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 — 0.9% 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.
104 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. 104 of the 182 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 CONNECTICUT HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT FOODSHARE INC ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MYRIAD USA INC ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds University of Michigan ↗
- Who funds BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Dartmouth College ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
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: Ibm International Foundation · The Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · AbbVie Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Bessemer Giving Fund · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · California Community Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase 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 Rust Family 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.
- Save the Sound — 37% of income from government
- Nature Forward — 32% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Operation Hope of Fairfield Inc — 15% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- University of Central Florida Research Foundation Inc — 10% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Connecticut Foodshare Inc — 5% of income from government
- Archaeological Institute of America — 1% of income from government
- Sacred Heart University Incorporated — 1% of income from government
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Pequot Library Association — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project 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 Rust Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Rust Family 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.