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The Telos Foundation at a glanceAlso receives grants: funding profile →

· 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 it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its fieldRead
04Through PlinthRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2023.

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

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 4 grants below total $79,268, the rows itemized in this filing. The $237,983 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $158,715 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized 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

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its 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 its 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
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. 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
How this is measured
The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Zaka North Inc; 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 grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, 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.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

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

Where the money sits, by cause and 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…BLACK AIDS INSTITUTE: $80,000 · OtherBLACK AIDS I…THE BAIL PROJECT INC: $80,000 · Crime & LegalTHE BAIL PRO…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$90,000Other$80,000Crime & Legal$80,000Human Services$50,000International$10,768Religion$8,500

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's 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
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Telos Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Telos Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%6%25%56%100%funder's 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, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 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 from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 11 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its 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.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12 to 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

    Play a game based on Telos’ filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
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    The regranting layer
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    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home