· Private foundation
The Volgenau 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k3 grants · $75k
- $50k–250k41 grants · $4.4M
- $250k+16 grants · $9.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $4,146,628 |
| PLASTIC SOLUTIONS FUND A SPONSORED PROJECT OF ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVI | $500,000 |
| CENTER FOR LARGE LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION | $400,000 |
| NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION | $400,000 |
| GREATER YELLOWSTONE COALITION | $400,000 |
| YELLOWSTONE TO YUKON CONSERVATION INITIATIVE | $400,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $350,000 |
| LAND TRUST ALLIANCECBFN | $300,000 |
| APPALACHIAN TRAIL CONSERVANCY | $300,000 |
| INDIGENOUS LED A PROJECT OF WILD FOUNDATION | $300,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY OF CALIFORNIA | $250,000 |
| THE WYLDLIFE FUND | $250,000 |
| DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE | $250,000 |
| ALASKA WILDERNESS LEAGUE | $250,000 |
| EARTHJUSTICE | $250,000 |
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 (FY17–20, $150k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 67% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of The Volgenau Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 20% of the giving stays in VA; read by stated purpose it is 22% — more of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +45% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
66 repeat relationships — 44 still active in FY2024, 22 since wound down; 11 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, 56% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5.9M 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
- ATAPPALACHIAN TRAIL CONSERVANCY7× · 2017–2024 · $4.5M · revenue +126%
- YTYELLOWSTONE TO YUKON8× · 2017–2024 · $4.0M · revenue +44%
- GYGREATER YELLOWSTONE COALITION8× · 2017–2024 · $3.7M · revenue +45%
Funded once
REWILDgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $2.1M · revenue +41%- ABAmerican Battlefield Trustgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $1.0M · revenue +50%
- NNATUREBRIDGEone grant, 2017 · $530k · revenue -12%
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Connect conservationists and supporters, deploy resources to the field, provide conservationists with tools and support they need to succeed.
The mission of wildcoast is to conserve coastal and marine ecosystems and address climate change through natural solutions. our staff is dedicated to conserving threatened and endangered coastlines and wildlife in california and mexico.…
Wildearth guardians works to protect and restore the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the american west.
Cascadia wildlands defends and restores cacasia's wild ecosystems in the forests,in the courts, and in the streets. we envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and…
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
Western rivers conservancy's mission is to protect outstanding river ecosystems in the western united states. continued on schedule o.we acquire land to conserve critical habitat, provide public access for compatible use and enjoyment, and…
To sustain, restore, and enhance the nation's fish, wildlife, plants, and habitats.
Washington wild protects and restores wild lands and waters in washington state through advocacy, education and civic engagement.
Eastern national promotes the public's understanding and support of america's national parks and other public trust partners by providing quality educational experiences, products and services.
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Sierra Streams Institute. 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 38 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.
68 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. 68 of the 104 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 APPALACHIAN TRAIL CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE TO YUKON ↗
- Who funds GREATER YELLOWSTONE COALITION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE CONSERVATION DBA CENTER FOR LARGE LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION ↗
- Who funds Defenders of Wildlife ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds REWILD ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds ALASKA WILDERNESS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALASKA CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Wild Earth Society Incorporated ↗
- Who funds FROM THE TOP INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCH ASSN OF WASHINGTON DC ↗
- Who funds THE POTOMAC CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PRAIRIE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE PIEDMONT ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES FOR ALASKA ↗
- Who funds American Battlefield Trust ↗
- Who funds POINT REYES BIRD OBSERVATORY ↗
- Who funds LEVINE MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE AND CARNIVORES INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF KENILWORTH AQUATIC GARDENS ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds NATUREBRIDGE ↗
- Who funds RIVER PARTNERS ↗
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: Patagoniaorg · Resources Legacy Fund · Wilburforce Foundation · Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation · The Nature Conservancy · Clif Family Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · The New-Land Foundation Inc · The Pew Charitable Trusts · The Fanwood Foundation · Tortuga Charitable Foundation · Weeden Foundation
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 Volgenau 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.
- National Marine Sanctuary Foundation — 88% of income from government
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — 63% of income from government
- New England Aquarium Corporation — 12% of income from government
- From the Top Inc — 6% of income from government
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% 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 Volgenau Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Volgenau 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.