· Public charity
The Ward Oaks Foundation Inc
To also help the environment by promoting the use of renewable energy sources, to invest in research and development of renewable energy sources, to encourage and promote the cost effective financing and operating of renewable energy facilities in order to reduce the cost of building and operating such facilities and to reduce the cost…
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.
The 3 grants below total $170,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $205,300 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $35,300 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $150k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MCDONOGH SCHOOL INC | $150,000 |
| PORTLAND COMMUNITY SQUASH | $10,000 |
| COMMUNITY ORGANIZING ALLIANCE | $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 (FY17–19, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +61% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 6 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; $10k 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
- PTPILGRIM TRACT SOCIETY INC7× · 2017–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +61% · 45% of their budget
- PAPARKS AND PEOPLE INC4× · 2017–2022 · $60k · revenue +10%
- EWELITE WOMEN OF EXCELLENCE3× · 2019–2023 · $47k · revenue +113%
Funded once
- RPROLAND PARK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +132% · 30% of their budget
- WOWard Oaks Foundation Incone grant, 2018 · $50k
- UCUpper Chesapeake Health Foundation Incgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue +29%
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 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.
The mission of the george washington university (gw) is to educate individuals in liberal arts, languages, sciences, learned professions, and other courses and subjects of study, and to conduct scholarly research and publish the findings…
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
Williams College strives to achieve educational excellence by fostering a community of learning in collaboration with students, faculty, staff, devoted alumni and parents.
Goucher College provides an innovative liberal arts education that prepares students with a broad, humane perspective for a life of inquiry, creativity, and critical and analytical thinking. The College's vision is to become a top-100…
Degree granting college-maryland institute college of art is a private college dedicated to the education of professional artists and the further advancement of art in the community.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Stages makes plays and tells stories that invite everyone to live more deeply and love more boldly.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Education and Public Service Mission: Rollins College educates students for global citizenship and responsible leadership, empowering graduates to pursue meaningful lives and productive careers. We are committed to liberal arts ethos and…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Georgia Tech Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Mathari Childrens Fund Inc. 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 39 years old; the field is 14. 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 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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 23 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 PILGRIM TRACT SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER STAGE ASSOCIATES INC ↗
- Who funds PARKS AND PEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds ROLAND PARK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Ward Oaks Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ELITE WOMEN OF EXCELLENCE ↗
- Who funds Portland Community Squash ↗
- Who funds Upper Chesapeake Health Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATED CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK THEATRE WORKSHOP INC ↗
- Who funds LAFAYETTE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MAINE CONSERVATION ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds GEORGIA TECH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CANDID ↗
- Who funds GENESIS INNOVATION ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds MATHARI CHILDRENS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ELEPHANT ENERGY INC ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds Sundance Institute ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SHALOM AUSTIN ↗
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: T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Oaks 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.
- Parks and People Inc — 43% of income from government
- Associated Catholic Charities Inc — 10% of income from government
- Center Stage Associates Inc — 7% of income from government
- Washington College — 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.