· Private foundation
Trace Foundation
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DEEP SOUTH TODAY | $123,000 |
| SALT SPRING INSTITUTE FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION AND ACTION | $103,625 |
| JOURNALISM DEVELOPMENT NETWORK | $50,000 |
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 US giving — 69% of grant dollars ($829k). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 31% that went abroad ($377k) is mapped below.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 60% of your 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.
Beyond the US — 31% of all-years giving ($377k)
5 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
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 +56% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 2 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, 18% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $227k 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
- TAThe Alfred Friendly Foundation5× · 2018–2022 · $215k · revenue -85%
- TITHE INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR CRIMINAL LAW REFORM AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLIC4× · 2021–2024 · $110k
- JDJOURNALISM DEVELOPMENT NETWORK INC2× · 2022–2025 · $90k · revenue +56%
Funded once
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $86k · revenue +47%- UOUNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF LAWone grant, 2017 · $71k
- ABAmerican Bar Association Fund for Justice and Educationone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue +15%
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.
International consortium of investigative journalists, inc.'s (icij) mission is to show people how the world really works through stories that rock the world; forcing positive change.
The International Center is a District of Columbia 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in 1977, has as its principal purpose the promotion of greater international understanding and the lessening of international frictions and…
The fuller project is the global newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking reporting that catalyzes positive change for women.
The organization provides critical support to independent journalists to investigate news stories regarding corruption, malfeasance, exploitation, misappropriation of funds in the public and private sectors.
Internews is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to empower local media worldwide to give people the news and information they need, the ability to connect and the means to make their voices heard.
The iib represents the interests of the international banking community before u.s. legislative/regulatory bodies liaises with international regulatory bodies serves as a source of information to the media and other interested parties…
The american journalism project, inc. is a first-of-its-kind venture philanthropy dedicated to building and supporting local news across the country. american journalism project makes grants to nonprofit news organizations, partners with…
Nbr conducts advanced independent research on strategic, political, economic, energy, globalization, and health issues affecting u.s. relations with asia. drawing upon an extensive network of the world's leading specialists and leveraging…
The assocn. of foreign press corrs. usa serves the community of international correspondents in the u.s. through educational programs, educational publications, and the production of educational content, as well as scholarships, excellence…
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
To provide accurate, objective information and analysis on international strategic issues for legislators, diplomats, foreign affairs analysts, international business leaders, economists, the military, defense commentators, journalists,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Int'l Center for Journalists Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Alfred Friendly Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 24 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 Alfred Friendly Foundation ↗
- Who funds DEEP SOUTH TODAY ↗
- Who funds JOURNALISM DEVELOPMENT NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds American Bar Association Fund for Justice and Education ↗
- Who funds OO PROJECT ↗
- Who funds THE INT'L CENTER FOR JOURNALISTS INC ↗
- Who funds THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA ↗
- Who funds INTEREXCHANGE 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: The Ford Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Trace 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.
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Trace Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Trace 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.