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Plinth

· Private foundation

The Whitman Institute

Its FY2023 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$57k
Granted FY2023
1
Grants FY2023
1
States reached
$57k
Largest
01What you fundRead
02The needRead
03Your edgeRead
04Your fieldRead
05Through PlinthRead
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2023.

Community Improvement$2.0MCivil Rights$900kPublic Benefit$796kArts & Culture$502kInternational$482kEducation$268kPhilanthropy$191kEnvironment$150kOther$0
02FY2023 · 1 grant

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

$56,879
Median grant
1
States reached
$0
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
THOUSAND CURRENTS$56,879
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY17–22, $418k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 28% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 10%COMONWEAL: $28k → 8%ON THE MOVE: $85k → 9%INNER CITY STRUGGLE: $25k → 14%UNLOCKING FUTURES INC: $25k → 17%COMMONWEAL: $25k → 8%ON THE MOVE: $50k → 9%COMMONWEAL: $8k → 8%ON THE MOVE: $50k → 9%COMMONWEAL: $3k → 8%ON THE MOVE: $50k → 9%ON THE MOVE: $5k → 9%AYNI INSTITUTE: $10k → 16%LATINO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION: $5k → 10%TIDES CENTER: $50k → 10%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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

WA
MN
MI
NY
MA
OH
PA
CA
MD
AZ
NM
NC
DC
LA
AL
GA
TX

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

78%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$4.2M · 26 repeat orgs$1.2M to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +103% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.

26 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2023, 25 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

26
41

Total granted

$4.2M
$1.2M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+103%
+25%

Still filing today

92%
54%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2023, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23
Arts & CultureHuman ServicesEducationCommunity ImprovementCivil RightsInternationalOther

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

  • SA
    SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC
    3× · 2017–2021 · $778k · revenue +490%
  • TC
    THOUSAND CURRENTS
    6× · 2017–2023 · $432k · revenue +378%
  • COMMUNITY INITIATIVES
    5× · 2017–2021 · $400k · revenue +254%

Funded once

  • ST
    SOGOREA TE LAND TRUST
    one grant, 2022 · $150k · revenue -60%
  • UR
    United Roots
    one grant, 2019 · $50k · revenue -99%
  • C
    CELEF
    one grant, 2019 · $50k

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

1
Next River

Next River is an institute for practicing the future. We cultivate the research, narratives, practices, and connections that transform our cultural landscape toward collective liberation.

Social Science
2
New Roots Institute

New Roots Institute is a nonprofit empowering the next generation with knowledge and training to end factory farming.

Food & Nutrition
3
Jobs with Justice San Francisco

A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…

Employment
4
The Climate Center

The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.

Education
5
Rules Foundation

/The Rules is a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality, climate change, and poverty around the world.

—
6
Justice Funders

Serve as a partner, educator, and guide for philanthropy in reimagining practices that advance a thriving and just world.

—
7
Coop Careers Inc

Building a movement of diverse, upwardly mobile college grads overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections.

Education
8
Nexus Community Partners

Nexus' mission is to build more engaged and powerful communities by supporting community building initiatives that expand community wealth and foster social and human capital.

Philanthropy
9
The Alliance for Collective Action

The Alliance for Collective Action convenes leaders of environmental and social movements to advance solutions for a thriving planet. We advance our mission through the Alliance Center building and community, as well as through Collective…

Environment
10
Guernica Centre for InternationalJustice

The Guernica Centre for International Justice represents the interests of victims in national and international legal proceedings, putting in place transnational accountability strategies that seek to maximize the protection of victims'…

International
11
Equal Justice Society

The Equal Justice Society (EJS) is transforming the nations consciousness on racethrough law, social science, and the arts. EJS works to dismantle structural andinstitutional racism to advance robust equal protection under the Fourteenth…

Civil Rights
12
Movement Generation

MG advances a Just Transition away from profit and pollution, towards healthy and resilient local economies. We've engaged over 160 organizations and thousands of change agents through retreats, political education, skills workshops,…

Education

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 Vesper Society. 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.

← shrinkinggrowing →↓ leaning in → pulling backsteadyEnvironmental Advocacy Orga…Native Hawaiian Community D…Community Arts OrganizationsLegal Aid & Immigration Ser…Education Equity LeadershipGovernment Accountability R…
the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side
Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 24 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

THE FIELDby orgYOUR GRANTEESby number24%0%<5yr15%4%5–10yr20%26%10–20yr17%47%20–35yr11%17%35–55yr13%6%55yr+
THE FIELDby orgYOUR MONEYby value24%0%<5yr15%4%5–10yr20%17%10–20yr17%35%20–35yr11%36%35–55yr13%9%55yr+

The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund
0.0%0/55
the rest of the field
14%
26,003/186,923

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.

04the grantee network

55 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. 55 of the 74 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
18
Early backer (in before they grew)
52/55
Grantees still filing
40/55
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC — $777,500 · EnvironmentSOCIAL AND ENVIRON…SOGOREA TE LAND TRUST — $150,000 · EnvironmentSOGOREA TE LAND TR…BEND THE ARC — $80,000 · OtherON THE MOVE — $240,000 · OtherON THE MOVEVOICE OF WITNESS A NONPROFIT PUBLIC BENEFIT CORPORATION — $282,000 · OtherVOICE OF WITNESS A NONPROFIT PUBLIC BE…Forward Together — $245,000 · OtherForward TogetherTHE PRAXIS PROJECT INC — $75,000 · Other+37 more — $972,379 · Other+37 moreBLUEPRINT NORTH CAROLINA — $220,000 · EducationBLUEPRINT NOR…ACCE Institute — $210,000 · EducationACCE Institut…PROTEUS FUND INC — $100,000 · EducationPROTEUS FUND …United Roots — $50,000 · EducationUnited RootsLEAD CALIFORNIA — $32,500 · EducationSmartmeme DBA Center for Story-based Strategy — $25,000 · Education+1 more — $15,000 · EducationCOMMUNITY INITIATIVES — $400,000 · PhilanthropyCOMMUNITY I…THE BLACK BELT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC — $50,000 · PhilanthropyTHE BLACK B…Rockwood Leadership Institute — $50,000 · PhilanthropyRockwood Le…THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION — $25,000 · PhilanthropyTHE CENTER FOR CULTURAL POWER — $25,000 · PhilanthropyMinnesota Council of Nonprofits Inc — $25,000 · PhilanthropyTHOUSAND CURRENTS — $431,936 · InternationalTHOUSAND C…Alliance for Global Justice Corp — $50,000 · InternationalAlliance f…GRASSROOTS INTERNATIONAL INC — $30,000 · InternationalGRASSROOTS…MILLENNIUM CAMPUS NETWORK INC — $30,000 · InternationalMILLENNIUM…THE RIGHT QUESTION INSTITUTE INC — $290,000 · Community ImprovementTHE RIGHT …THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC — $70,000 · Community ImprovementTHIRD SECT…MOVEMENT STRATEGY CENTER — $65,000 · Community ImprovementMOVEMENT S…RVC SEATTLE — $35,000 · Community ImprovementRVC SEATTL…COMMON FUTURE — $25,000 · Community ImprovementCOMMON COUNSEL FOUNDATION — $25,000 · Community ImprovementIntersection for the Arts — $286,500 · Arts & CultureIntersect…Alternate RootsInc — $65,000 · Arts & CultureAlternate…East Bay Center for the Performing Arts — $50,000 · Arts & CultureEast Bay …ALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS INC — $30,000 · Arts & CultureALLIED ME…ONE COMMON UNITY — $25,000 · Arts & CultureBETTER FAMILY LIFE INC — $20,000 · Arts & Culture+1 more — $10,000 · Arts & Culture
Environment$927,500Other$1,894,379Education$652,500Philanthropy$575,000International$541,936Community Improvement$510,000Arts & Culture$486,500

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetSOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC — $777,500 over 3y, 0.9% of budgetTHOUSAND CURRENTS — $431,936 over 6y, 2.0% of budgetCOMMUNITY INITIATIVES — $400,000 over 5y, 0.4% of budgetTHE RIGHT QUESTION INSTITUTE INC — $290,000 over 5y, 9.9% of budgetIntersection for the Arts — $286,500 over 5y, 1.3% of budgetVOICE OF WITNESS A NONPROFIT PUBLIC BENEFIT CORPORATION — $282,000 over 5y, 10% of budgetForward Together — $245,000 over 5y, 1.5% of budgetON THE MOVE — $240,000 over 4y, 1.3% of budgetBLUEPRINT NORTH CAROLINA — $220,000 over 4y, 1.8% of budgetACCE Institute — $210,000 over 3y, 2.1% of budgetSOGOREA TE LAND TRUST — $150,000 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetPROTEUS FUND INC — $100,000 over 4y, 0.1% of budgetTHE PRAXIS PROJECT INC — $75,000 over 3y, 0.6% of budgetTHIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC — $70,000 over 2y, 0.1% of budgetAlternate RootsInc — $65,000 over 3y, 1.5% of budgetMOVEMENT STRATEGY CENTER — $65,000 over 2y, 0.2% of budgetCOMMONWEAL — $62,500 over 4y, 0.7% of budgetPROJECT SOUTH INC — $62,500 over 2y, 2.3% of budgetUnited Roots — $50,000 over 1y, 2.9% of budgetTHE BLACK BELT COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC — $50,000 over 2y, 0.3% of budgetTIDES CENTER — $50,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetTHE OHIO ORGANIZING COLLABORATIVE — $50,000 over 2y, 0.8% of budgetRockwood Leadership Institute — $50,000 over 1y, 1.2% of budgetEast Bay Center for the Performing Arts — $50,000 over 1y, 1.2% of budgetAlliance for Global Justice Corp — $50,000 over 2y, 0.5% of budgetRVC SEATTLE — $35,000 over 2y, 2.8% of budgetNEO Philanthropy Inc — $35,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetLEAD CALIFORNIA — $32,500 over 2y, 6.6% of budgetALLIED MEDIA PROJECTS INC — $30,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetGRASSROOTS INTERNATIONAL INC — $30,000 over 2y, 0.3% of budgetMILLENNIUM CAMPUS NETWORK INC — $30,000 over 4y, 8.0% of budgetCOMMON FUTURE — $25,000 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetNAEVA — $25,000 over 1y, 1.8% of budgetTHE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION — $25,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetURGE UNITE FOR REPRODUCTIVE & GENDER EQUITY — $25,000 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetINNERCITY STRUGGLE — $25,000 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetSmartmeme DBA Center for Story-based Strategy — $25,000 over 1y, 2.5% of budgetTHE CENTER FOR CULTURAL POWER — $25,000 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetVOICE OF THE EXPERIENCED VOTE — $25,000 over 1y, 1.3% of budgetMinnesota Council of Nonprofits Inc — $25,000 over 1y, 0.8% of budgetUNLOCKING FUTURES INC — $25,000 over 1y, 2.6% of budgetUNITED WE DREAM NETWORK INC — $25,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetThe Center for Investigative Reporting Inc — $25,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetCOMMON COUNSEL FOUNDATION — $25,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetVESPER SOCIETY — $15,000 over 1y, 0.7% of budgetINSTITUTE FOR WASHINGTONS FUTURE — $12,500 over 1y, 6.4% of budgetGRASSROOTS GLOBAL JUSTICE — $10,000 over 1y, 0.6% of budgetAYNI INSTITUTE INC — $10,000 over 1y, 0.9% of budget
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.

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.

Amalgamated Charitabl…Tides FoundationThe San Francisco Fou…ImpactassetsincThe Ford FoundationRockefeller Philanthr…NEO Philanthropy IncWellspring Philanthro…Proteus Fund IncThe Libra FoundationSilicon Valley Commun…Surdna Foundation Inc
Amalgamated Charitable Foundation IncDC34.7× affinity17 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Tides Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Impactassetsinc · The Ford Foundation · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · Proteus Fund Inc · The Libra Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Surdna 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 Whitman Institute 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.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 50%1%4%8%15%your share of their income ↑0%19%38%56%75%share of the org’s income from government →median 3%
  • Third Sector New England Inc — 3% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
5get no government money at all
10report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–75%
typical government reliance, FY20–25

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Whitman Institute?

Find your warmest path to The Whitman Institute 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.

On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 74 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines