· Private foundation
The Ward Foundation Inc
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 FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| STAYING PUT IN NEW CANAAN | $5,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,486 |
| NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM | $1,500 |
| AMERICARES | $1,040 |
| MOOSE CHARITIES | $1,000 |
| ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE RESEARCH | $1,000 |
| VISTA LIFE INNOVATIONS | $1,000 |
| NEW CANAAN HIGH SCHOOL SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC | $1,000 |
| DISABLED VETERANS NATIONAL FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| JUDICIAL WATCH | $500 |
| WAVENY CARE CENTER INC | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| EARLHAM COLLEGE | $500 |
| NEW CANAAN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $500 |
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 (FY21–24, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 8% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +22% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 9 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, 39% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k 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
JUDICIAL WATCH INC3× · 2022–2024 · $3k · revenue +24%- NCNEW CANAAN HIGH SCHOOL SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC2× · 2023–2024 · $2k · revenue +850%
- ECEarlham College Inc2× · 2023–2024 · $2k · revenue +19%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $5k
FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCESone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue -33%- NCNEW CANAAN LAND CONSERVATION TRUST INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $2k · revenue +141%
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 University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Western new england university, a comprehensive private institution with a tradition of excellence in teaching and scholarship and a commitment to service, awards undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees in various departments from…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
Education, research, medical services and other public services.
Ilsi is a global, nonprofit federation dedicated to generating and advancing emerging science and groundbreaking research to ensure foods are safe, nutritious and sustainable, and that they improve planetary and human health and well-being…
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.
Improve the health of every person in our community through the efficient delivery of excellent, innovative and compassionate care.
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
Biu produces students who excel in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business & the arts.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New Canaan Land Conservation Trust Inc and the most unlike its peers is The National World War Ii Museum 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 43 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.
29 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. 29 of the 49 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 VISTA LIFE INNOVATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES ↗
- Who funds STAYING PUT IN NEW CANAAN INC ↗
- Who funds NEW CANAAN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WAVENY CARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds NEW CANAAN LAND CONSERVATION TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds NEW CANAAN HIGH SCHOOL SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Earlham College Inc ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds AMERICARES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Lewy Body Dementia Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Mercy Ships International ↗
- Who funds LAVALLETTE VOLUNTEER FIRST AID SQUAD INC ↗
- Who funds DISABLED VETERANS NATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds MOOSE CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds KENT SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds COVENANT HOUSE ↗
- Who funds New Canaan Nature Center Association Inc ↗
- Who funds NEW CANAAN GROUP HOME INC ↗
- Who funds OPERATION SMILE INC ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ORBIS INTERNATIONAL 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: Hobbs Family Charitable Trust · Half Moon Foundation · Jim and Dede Bartlett Foundation · New Canaan Community Foundation Inc · The a James Bach and Vona Hopkins Foundation Inc · The Morris Family Foundation · MLE Foundation Inc · Jeniam Foundation · The Richard & Barbara Whitcomb Foundatio · Fairfield County's Community Foundation Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Ayco Charitable 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 Ward Foundation Inc 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Vista Life Innovations Inc — 33% of income from government
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% 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 Ward Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Ward Foundation Inc 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.