· Private foundation
The Terrence and Ruth Elkes Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k8 grants · $110k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $785k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAN CARLOS EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $200,000 |
| FREE THE SLAVES | $150,000 |
| TRANSPARENTEM LTD | $110,000 |
| WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY | $100,000 |
| THORN | $75,000 |
| PRINCETON UNIVERSITY | $50,000 |
| UCSF DIABETES CENTER | $50,000 |
| POLARIS PROJECT | $50,000 |
| SURVIVOR ALLIANCE | $25,000 |
| MENLO SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| SF FINE ARTS MUSEUM | $10,000 |
| HARVARD STEM CELL INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES | $10,000 |
| SF MUSEUM OF MODERN ART | $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 (FY20–24, $545k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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.
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 +26% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $50k 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
- SCSAN CARLOS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION4× · 2020–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +1%
WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY3× · 2022–2024 · $750k · revenue +34%- MSMENLO SCHOOL6× · 2019–2024 · $455k · revenue +19%
Funded once
- DRDIABETES RESEARCH CENTERone grant, 2021 · $50k
- UWUNITED WAY INCone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue -27%
- HMHorace Mann Schoolone grant, 2022 · $35k · revenue +10%
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 central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…
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.
Chartered by a unanimous act of congress, the museum is america's national institution for the documentation, study, interpretation, and education of holocaust history and serves as our country's memorial to the victims of the holocaust.…
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
Smith college educates women of promise for lives of distinction and purpose. a college of and for the world, smith college links the power of the liberal arts to excellence in research and scholarship, developing leaders for society's…
The mission of lowell observatory is to pursue the study of astronomy, especially the study of our solar system and its evolution; to conduct pure research in astronomical phenomena; and to maintain quality public education and outreach…
Poptech's mission is to accelerate the positive impact of world-changing people, projects and ideas. founded in 1996 by bob metcalfe (inventor, ethernet) and john sculley (apple, pepsi), poptech originally provided a forum to critically…
Future problem solving proudly celebrates more than 50 years of placing close to a million young people at the core of a dynamic, purposeful learning experience. each year k-12 students from around the world participate in a variety of…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
Creating a more sustainable, peaceful, and just world through education, development, and exchange since 1932. as both an accredited academic institution and an international ngo, world learning, inc. offers the best of theory and practice…
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)
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Free the Slaves and the most unlike its peers is Cashmere Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 42 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 — 0.0% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 33 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 FREE THE SLAVES ↗
- Who funds SAN CARLOS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MENLO SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds POLARIS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds THORN ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds SURVIVOR ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds TRANSPARENTEM LTD ↗
- Who funds THE FREEDOM FUND ↗
- Who funds Tenants Together ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds Horace Mann School ↗
- Who funds THE EXPLORATORIUM ↗
- Who funds CASHMERE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GRANDMOTHER PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MID-PENINSULA EDUCATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY CITIES TUTORING INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB ↗
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: Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Humanity United · Marin Community Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Network for Good · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Terrence and Ruth Elkes 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
- Willamette University — 1% 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.