· Private foundation
Thurston 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k20 grants · $76k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $314k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $353k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE OAKS ACADEMY | $150,000 |
| GLEANERS | $100,000 |
| SERVANTS AT WORK | $52,500 |
| OUTREACH INC | $50,250 |
| FAMILY PROMISE OF GREATER INDIANAPOLIS | $45,000 |
| DOVE RECOVERY HOUSE | $40,000 |
| GENNESARET FREE CLINICS | $40,000 |
| SHEPHERD COMMUNITY CENTER | $40,000 |
| SEEDS OF CARING | $25,000 |
| PAWS AND THINK INC | $20,000 |
| HOPE ACADEMY | $15,000 |
| GREATER INDY HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $15,000 |
| CONCERTS FOR A CAUSE | $14,000 |
| CHILD ADVOCATES | $10,000 |
| SECOND HELPINGS | $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 (FY19–24, $829k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 95% 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.
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 6% of Thurston 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, 95% of the giving stays in IN; read by stated purpose it is 90% — less 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 +47% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2024, 12 since wound down; 17 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $70k 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
- TOThe Oaks Academy Inc6× · 2019–2024 · $546k · revenue +84%
- GFGLEANERS FOOD BANK OF INDIANA INC6× · 2019–2024 · $320k · revenue +80%
- SAServants at Work Inc6× · 2019–2024 · $275k · revenue +110%
Funded once
- FBFAY BICCARD GLICK NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERone grant, 2023 · $50k
- IFINSTITUTE FOR SHELTER CAREone grant, 2023 · $30k
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF GREATER NW INDIANAone grant, 2022 · $25k
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.
Educate, Inspire, Connect and Mobilize Community Leaders to serve and strengthen greater Indianapolis.
To empower its peers with disabilities to lead and control their own lives.
By drawing on varied resources within public agencies and the private sector, we hope to provide hunger relief for those in need throughout Indiana.
Enroll indy helps families choose schools that meet their children's needs by providing a one-stop enrollment process, school information that is relevant and easy to understand, and data to inform school improvement in indianapolis,…
KIPP Indy is a network of tuition-free, open-enrollment, college preparatory, public charter schools. KIPP Indy's mission is to create a network of schools that provides educationally underserved children with a rigorous education that…
To enhance the competitive position and fulfill business requirements of independent agents and brokers, advocating buyer interest, and continually striving to be the premier trade association.
Faith in Indiana (formerly IndyCAN) is a catalyst for faith communities and marginalized peoples to act collectively for racial and economic justice in Indiana. FaithIN develops civic leaders directly impacted by inequality, awakens the…
At indiana guardianship services, inc., we are dedicated to providing our clients with the same compassion, attention, and patience as our own family. through competence, service, and dignity, we uphold the values of the national…
Child advocacy organization that focuses on the prevention of child sexual abuse and youth suicide.
Trusted journalism, inspiring stories and lifelong learning.
We work with people with disabilities, their families and the community to create independence so that all may thrive.
Plan, coordinate and provide affordable housing to low-income individuals and families in Southeastern Indiana.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Child Advocates Inc and the most unlike its peers is Paws & Think 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 27 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% 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.
56 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. 56 of the 79 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 The Oaks Academy Inc ↗
- Who funds GLEANERS FOOD BANK OF INDIANA INC ↗
- Who funds Servants at Work Inc ↗
- Who funds OUTREACH INC ↗
- Who funds Shepherd Community Inc ↗
- Who funds GENNESARET FREE CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds SECOND HELPINGS INC ↗
- Who funds Family Promise of Greater Indianapolis Inc ↗
- Who funds CHILD ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds THE HOPE ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL LEGACY GROUP FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DREAM ALIVE INC ↗
- Who funds SEEDS OF CARING ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF GREATER INDIANAPOLIS INC ↗
- Who funds TRINITY HAVEN INC ↗
- Who funds WESTMINSTER NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds PACE INC ↗
- Who funds UMOJA PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds CONCERTS FOR A CAUSE INC ↗
- Who funds THE JULIAN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PAWS & THINK INC ↗
- Who funds Indiana University Foundation ↗
- Who funds Kijana Educational Empowerment Initiative Inc ↗
- Who funds Dayspring Center Inc ↗
- Who funds JOHNSON COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DOVE RECOVERY HOUSE FOR WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds INDIANAPOLIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INDIANA TROOPERS YOUTH SERVICES 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: Central Indiana Community Foundation Inc · The Indianapolis Foundation Inc · Lilly Endowment Inc · Nicholas H Noyes Jr Memorial Foundation · United Way of Central Indiana Inc · Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust · Hoover Family Foundation · The Brave Heart Foundation Inc · Richard M Fairbanks Foundation Inc · Hamilton County Community Foundation Inc · Maurer Family Foundation Inc · Lumina Foundation for Education 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 Thurston 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.
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 Thurston Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Thurston 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.