Skip to content
Plinth

· Public charity

The Telos Foundation

Enables individuals to lead lives they have reason to value.

$238k
Granted FY2023
4
Grants FY2023
1
States reached
$50k
Largest
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20202023.

Civil Rights$200kHealth$160kCrime & Legal$160kPhilanthropy$140kInternational$71kReligion$9k
02FY2023 · 4 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

The 4 grants below total $79,268 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $237,983 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $158,715 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.

By grant size · FY2023

  • Under $10k1 grant · $9k
  • $10k–50k2 grants · $21k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
$10,768
Median grant
1
States reached
$83k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
BELEV ECHAD INC$50,000
JEWISH NATIONAL FUND$10,768
US FRIENDS OF ERAN$10,000
ZAKA$8,500
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY23–23, $50k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 12%BELEV ECHAD INC: $50k → 17%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

03Your field

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.

1
The Bnai Jacob Foundation
2
The Shalom Ish Foundation
Philanthropy
3
Idf Memorial Foundation
Philanthropy
4
The Jir Foundation
Philanthropy
5
The J Foundation
Philanthropy
6
Jewish Life Foundation
7
The Ne'eman Foundation
Human Services
8
Galil Foundation
Philanthropy
9
Justice Reform Foundation
10
Yad Yosef Foundation
Philanthropy
11
Zichron Boruch Tzvi Foundation
Philanthropy
12
Bader Simon Foundation
Arts & Culture

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Zaka North Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Ball Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

10 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 10 of the 11 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
2
Early backer (in before they grew)
10/10
Grantees still filing
4/10
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC — $200,000 · Civil RightsNAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INCEQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE — $80,000 · Civil RightsEQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVETHE LOVELAND FOUNDATION INC — $20,000 · Civil RightsTHE LOVELAND FOUNDATION INCTHE BALL FOUNDATION — $120,000 · PhilanthropyTHE BALL FOUNDATIO…ST JAMES INFIRMARY — $80,000 · HealthST JAMES INFI…US FRIENDS OF ERAN INC — $10,000 · HealthUS FRIENDS OF…THE BAIL PROJECT INC — $80,000 · Crime & LegalTHE BAIL PRO…BLACK AIDS INSTITUTE — $80,000 · OtherBLACK AIDS I…BELEV ECHAD INC — $50,000 · Human ServicesJEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC — $10,768 · InternationalZAKA NORTH INC — $8,500 · Religion
Civil Rights$300,000Philanthropy$120,000Health$90,000Crime & Legal$80,000Other$80,000Human Services$50,000International$10,768Religion$8,500

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetNAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC — $200,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetEQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE — $80,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetTHE BAIL PROJECT INC — $80,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetST JAMES INFIRMARY — $80,000 over 1y, 2.2% of budgetBELEV ECHAD INC — $50,000 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetJEWISH NATIONAL FUND (KEREN KAYEMETH LEISRAEL) INC — $10,768 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetUS FRIENDS OF ERAN INC — $10,000 over 1y, 1.6% of budgetZAKA NORTH INC — $8,500 over 1y, 0.1% of budget
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.

Government reliance of your grantees

Every dot is one organization The Telos 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.

2024
202122232425
no gov · 00%6%25%56%100%your share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    1report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY2025

    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.

    04Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to The Telos Foundation?

    Find your warmest path to The Telos 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 11 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record and reports $72k of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2023, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

    Source object · view filing

    More from the funding graph