· Private foundation
The Sant Foundation
Its FY2020 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
99% of The Sant Foundation’s FY2020 grant dollars went to Bank Of America Charitable Gift Fd, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2020 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year The Sant Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 18 organizations, $12k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2020.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DONALD DANFORTH PLANT SCIENCE CENTER | $2,225 |
| WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST LOUIS | $1,050 |
| SALEM METHODIST PRESCHOOL | $1,000 |
| MISSOURI VETERANS COMMISSION | $1,000 |
| ROTARY CLUB OF ST LOUIS | $1,000 |
| ST JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH | $650 |
| MARY INSTITUTE AND ST LOUIS COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL | $550 |
| ST LUKES HOSPITAL | $500 |
| INDEPENDENCE CENTER | $500 |
| ST LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO | $500 |
| CITY ACADEMY | $350 |
| AMERICAN DANCE TROUPE | $300 |
| THE REPERTORY THEATRE OF ST LOUIS | $300 |
| LITTLE TRAVERSE CONSERVANCY | $300 |
| TIP OF THE MITT WATERSHED COUNCIL | $300 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–20) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of your 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.
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 +84% since the first grant, against +62% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2019, 1 since wound down; 23 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (too recent to call). Read against FY2019, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2020, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k 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
- SJST JOHNS EPISCOPAL CHURCH3× · 2017–2019 · $2k
- ADAMERICAN DANCE TROUPE2× · 2018–2019 · $1k
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY2× · 2017–2019 · $1k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- COCHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPARDone grant, 2018 · $576
- APAMERICAN PRAIRIE FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $500 · revenue +162%
- JBJOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOLgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $100 · revenue +62%
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.
Thomas jefferson school engages its students in the education necessary to live as responsible citizens of the world. through the strongest possible college-prepatory program and within a nurturing community, students develop a…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
Mitchell hamline school of law is an independent law school that advances its mission through a combination of legal education, public service, and community engagement. it is dedicated to preparing students to practice law, while also…
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.
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
Marietta college (mc) provides a strong foundation for a lifetime of leadership, critical thinking, and problem solving. we achieve this mission by offering undergraduates a contemporary liberal arts education and graduate students an…
Williams College strives to achieve educational excellence by fostering a community of learning in collaboration with students, faculty, staff, devoted alumni and parents.
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…
Lake forest academy strives to embody in its practices - and to cultivate in its students -excellence of character, scholarship, citizenship, and responsibility.
University of the sciences prepares students to become leaders, innovators, and skilled practitioners in the sciences, the health professions, and related disciplines. we deliver excellence in teaching, research, and service through a safe…
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Scholarship Foundation of St Louis and the most unlike its peers is Masters School. 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 44 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 39 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 BANK OF AMERICA CHARITABLE GIFT FD ↗
- Who funds DONALD DANFORTH PLANT SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Mary Institute and St Louis Country Day School ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PRAIRIE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CITY ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds THE REPERTORY THEATRE OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds TIP OF THE MITT WATERSHED COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Little Traverse Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds THE SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds Forest Park Forever Inc ↗
- Who funds HAWTHORN LEADERSHIP SCHOOL FOR GIRLS ↗
- Who funds JOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR BARNES-JEWISH HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds MASTERS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MCLAREN NORTHERN MICHIGAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Kanakuk Ministries ↗
- Who funds UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATION USO OF MISSOURI INC ↗
- Who funds TRIPLE A YOUTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
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: St Louis Community Foundation Inc · St Louis Community Foundation · The Lilly Christy Busch Hermann Foundation · Pershing Charitable Trust · United Way of Greater St Louis Inc · Commerce Bancshares Foundation · Stanley & Lucy Lopata Foundation · Edward Jones Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc
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 Sant 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.
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% 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 Sant Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Sant 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.