· Private foundation
Tolson Family Foundation
Its FY2019 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 FY2017–2019.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2019
- Under $10k5 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $18k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SASHA BRUCE YOUTHWORK | $50,000 |
| BRYN ATHYN COLLEGE | $17,629 |
| ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH | $5,000 |
| THE POTOMAC SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| BARRACKS ROW MAIN STREET | $2,000 |
| CAPITOL HILL DAY SCHOOL | $2,000 |
| KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS | $1,000 |
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, $178k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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.
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 18% of Tolson Family 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, 75% of the giving stays in DC; read by stated purpose it is 71% — 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.
6 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2019, 2 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (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 FY2019, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k 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
- SBSASHA BRUCE YOUTHWORK INC3× · 2017–2019 · $133k · revenue +66%
- CHCapitol Hill Day School3× · 2017–2019 · $53k · revenue +40%
- TPThe Potomac School3× · 2017–2019 · $13k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +46%
- RIREFUGEE & IMMIGRANT CENTER FOR EDUCATION & LEGAL SERVICESone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue -30%
- AHAmerican Heart Association Incgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +33%
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.
To provide a rigorous, classical education to public school middle and high school students from across the district of columbia.
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…
The organization's mission is to enable a diverse group of children to meet high expectations, develop creativity, critical thinking, problem solving skills, and achieve a deep understanding of complex subjects, while acquiring a love of…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
To prepare students to succeed in competitive colleges and to empower them to use public policy to create a more just, free, and equal world.
Mclean school's small classes and abilities model prepare bright students in kindergarten through twelfth grade, including those with dyslexia, anxiety, and attention issues, for college success.
The seed public charter school of washington, dc is a public college-preparatory boarding school whose primary mission is to provide an outstanding intensive educational program that prepares children, both academically and socially, for…
To inform and enrich the intellectual lives of 20,000 alumni of harvard university in the washington, dc area and to assist harvard university with respect to applicants and undergraduates from the dc area.
Washington college challenges and inspires emerging citizen leaders to discover lives of purpose and passion.core valueswe share these values of our founding patron, george washington: integrity, determination, curiosity, civility,…
Bullis school provides a student-centered balanced experience in academics, arts, athletics and community service. bullis uniquely prepares all students to become caring citizens and creative, critical thinkers who will thrive in…
Two rivers mission: to nurture a diverse group of students to become lifelong, active participants in their own education, develop a sense of self and community, and become responsible and compassionate members of society.
Ingenuity prep public charter school was formed to prepare students to succeed in college and beyond as impactful civiic leaders.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fight for Children Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Academy of the New Church. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
15 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. 15 of the 17 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 SASHA BRUCE YOUTHWORK INC ↗
- Who funds THE ACADEMY OF THE NEW CHURCH ↗
- Who funds Capitol Hill Day School ↗
- Who funds FIGHT FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds The Potomac School ↗
- Who funds Capitol Hill Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE & IMMIGRANT CENTER FOR EDUCATION & LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL AREA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds BARRACKS ROW MAIN STREET INC ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds JOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds FIGHTING VIKING FOOTBALL FAMILY ↗
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: Greater Washington Community Foundation · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 Tolson Family 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 Tolson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Tolson Family 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.