· Private foundation
The Ward Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $490k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $502k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MAIA | $157,819 |
| THE SPARKS FOUNDATION | $110,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $103,839 |
| AMIGOS DE SANTA CRUZ FOUNDATION | $80,250 |
| MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTER | $50,000 |
| BOYS HOPE GIRLS HOPE NETWORK | $46,170 |
| SHE'S THE FIRST | $38,896 |
| LIVE OAK WILDERNESS CAMP | $36,000 |
| PLANTING SEEDS INTERNATIONAL | $35,000 |
| CREMOS NORTE | $30,000 |
| LIMITLESS HORIZONS | $30,000 |
| THE POPULATION COUNCIL | $25,000 |
| SUCCESS AT THURGOOD MARSHALL | $25,000 |
| COLLEGE BEYOND | $25,000 |
| BARD EARLY COLLEGE | $25,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $439k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 35% 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 +28% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $68k 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
- MMAIA7× · 2019–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +14%
- LHLIMITLESS HORIZONS IXIL INC5× · 2021–2025 · $376k · revenue +24%
- LOLIVE OAK WILDERNESS CAMP5× · 2021–2025 · $148k · revenue +142%
Funded once
- CACHILD AIDone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue -14%
- NANU ALPHA LAMBDA EDUCATIONAL AND CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $20k
- TGTEACHERS2TEACHERS GLOBALone grant, 2019 · $20k
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.
Partners In Health (PIH) is a non-profit, global health organization that fights social injustice by bringing the benefits of modern medical science first and foremost to the most vulnerable communities worldwide. In Haiti, Malawi, Rwanda,…
Health Poverty Action USA acts in solidarity with health workers, activists & communities worldwide to improve health & challenge the causes of poverty. We do this in 3 distinct ways: 1. We approach health as an issue of social justice. We…
The world is grappling with complex problems, including climate change, war, poverty, and ongoing human rights violations. These issues disproportionately impact women, particularly in developing countries. In nations recovering from…
To improve access, quality and relevance of education for youth in rural central america.
The international institute on race, equality and human rights contributes to the promotion and defense of human rights, through training, technical assistance, advocacy, and strategic litigation conducted at the regional and international…
Global Pediatric Alliance's mission is to promote grassroots empowerment and community-based healthcare to reduce maternal and infant mortality, and improve the lives of women and children in poor, rural areas in Latin America.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
To promote and protect human rights in the United States and around the world.
Speak Up exists to transform the world on behalf of the poor. Our mission is to create a new reality for girls in poverty. We work toward this goal through educational programs support of safe homes and practical legal work.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
To advance human rights and social justice in the americas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Global Fund for Children and the most unlike its peers is The Sparks Foundation. 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 21 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 5% 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.
43 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. 43 of the 56 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 MAIA ↗
- Who funds LIMITLESS HORIZONS IXIL INC ↗
- Who funds THE SPARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LIVE OAK WILDERNESS CAMP ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Womens Justice Initiative Inc ↗
- Who funds Creamos Norte ↗
- Who funds Wuqu Kawoq SA ↗
- Who funds SHE'S THE FIRST INC ↗
- Who funds AMIGOS DE SANTA CRUZ FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Planting Seeds International ↗
- Who funds 18TH WARD ↗
- Who funds Friends of Suenos ↗
- Who funds Peronia Adolescente ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE BEYOND INC ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDSHIP BRIDGE ↗
- Who funds Evergreen Rotary Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ANTIGUA INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds unCommon Construction Inc ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL FUND FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds Louisiana Association of Public Charter ↗
- Who funds Be Loud Studios ↗
- Who funds NATIK ESPERANZA ↗
- Who funds CHILD AID ↗
- Who funds THE POPULATION COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds BRIGHT SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF ↗
- Who funds POMONA IMPACT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PHILANTHROPIECE FOUNDATION ↗
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 loosely connected circle, clustered around a few shared anchors.
Open a dossier: Luis Von Ahn Foundation · The Greater New Orleans Foundation · The Gpoa Foundation · Baptist Community Ministries · Pro Bono Publico Foundation · Together Women Rise · Goldring Family Foundation · The Tinker Foundation Inc · New Orleans Community Support Foundation · The Denver Foundation · Linda Vista Foundation · The Summit Charitable Foundation 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 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
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.