· Private foundation
The Sprocket Foundation
Its FY2023 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- $10k–50k8 grants · $275k
- $50k–250k16 grants · $1.5M
- $250k+1 grant · $275k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY | $275,000 |
| PROTEUS FUND | $235,000 |
| COMMON COUNSEL FOUNDATION | $165,000 |
| SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS | $155,000 |
| GROUNDSWELL FUND | $110,000 |
| TIDES FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| THE PRAXIS PROJECT INC | $100,000 |
| BREAD & ROSES | $85,000 |
| TRANS QUEER PUEBLO | $75,000 |
| FAMILIES FOR JUSTICE HEALING | $70,000 |
| DEFENDING RIGHTS AND DISSENT | $60,000 |
| MANO AMIGA | $55,000 |
| MOVEMENT ALLIANCE PROJECT | $55,000 |
| FAITH FOR JUSTICE | $55,000 |
| PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $261k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 18% 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.
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.
28 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2023, 8 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k 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
- BPBOREALIS PHILANTHROPY6× · 2018–2023 · $1.1M · revenue +81%
NEO Philanthropy Inc3× · 2019–2021 · $525k · revenue +58%- SASOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC3× · 2021–2023 · $390k · revenue +29%
Funded once
- ACAUSTIN COMMUNITY CENTERone grant, 2017 · $100k
- PPRXone grant, 2018 · $90k
- TPTHE PRAXIS PROJECT INC FREE HEARTSone grant, 2021 · $90k
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 Public Interest Law Center uses high-impact legal strategies to advance the civil, social, and economic rights of communities in the Philadelphia region facing discrimination, inequality, and poverty. We use litigation, community…
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.
To provide high quality civil legal assistance and other services to indigent individuals and families.
Building support for the rights of working people through coalitions of labor and community and through public education.
The Equal Justice Society (EJS) is transforming the nations consciousness on racethrough law, social science, and the arts. EJS works to dismantle structural andinstitutional racism to advance robust equal protection under the Fourteenth…
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
Council for court excellence's (cce's) mission is to bring people together to conduct research, educate, and advocate to make d.c.'s unique legal systems more just, equitable, and accountable to the community.
Pidc plans and implements economic development initiatives (see schedule o) which enhance the competitive environment, generate jobs and produce higher tax ratables throughout philadelphia.
Fund for Justice is a nationally connected social impact research and advocacy organization that works to achieve fundamental, systemic reform by addressing policies and practicies that prevent individuals from reaching their full…
Southern coalition for social justice partners with communities of color and economically disadvantaged communities across the south to defend and advance their political, social, and economic rights. through an intersectional and…
Oregon Justice Network is an alliance built and staffed by criminal legal system impacted people advocating for the well-being of people affected or at-risk of being affected by carceral systems. Our work centers around restorative…
PA United organizes and builds power across Western PA to create
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Families for Justice As Healing Inc and the most unlike its peers is Virgin Islands Relief Fund 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 23 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
71 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. 71 of the 103 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 PROTEUS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds BOREALIS PHILANTHROPY ↗
- Who funds COMMON COUNSEL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILIES FOR JUSTICE AS HEALING INC ↗
- Who funds THE ASTRAEA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE PRAXIS PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds DEFENDING RIGHTS AND DISSENT INC ↗
- Who funds MOVEMENT ALLIANCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds AMISTAD LAW PROJECT ↗
- Who funds FAITH FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds Greater Birmingham Ministries ↗
- Who funds MUSLIM JUSTICE LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds JAIL PROJECT OF TEXAS ↗
- Who funds Bread and Roses Community Fund ↗
- Who funds MAINE INITIATIVESINC ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds PUTNEY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds CLEAN AIR COALITION OF WESTERN NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds ROLLING HARVEST FOOD RESCUE ↗
- Who funds INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH STAR FUND 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: Proteus Fund Inc · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Tides Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · The Philadelphia Foundation · Borealis Philanthropy · Rsf Social Finance Inc · The New World Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The William Penn Foundation · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · Surdna Foundation 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 Sprocket 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 Sprocket Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Sprocket 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.