· Private foundation
Unlikely Collaborators 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 FY2022–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k7 grants · $178k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $788k
- $250k+1 grant · $799k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Northeastern University | $799,153 |
| Project Ijtihad DBA Moral Courage Project | $230,000 |
| Pen America Los Angeles | $130,566 |
| Naropa University | $122,750 |
| Holistic Life Foundation | $100,000 |
| KALW Public Media Inc | $75,000 |
| Harvest Home | $75,000 |
| John P McGovern Museum of Health & Medical Science | $55,000 |
| Creative Visions Foundation | $35,000 |
| Swan Songs Musical Last Wishes | $30,000 |
| Motus Theater | $25,000 |
| American Red Cross - LA Region | $25,000 |
| Purpose Built Families Foundation | $25,000 |
| Fiscal Sponsorship Allies | $25,000 |
| Create Now Inc | $12,500 |
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 (FY22–24, $350k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 83% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 14% of Unlikely Collaborators 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.
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 +22% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 2 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; $156k 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
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY2× · 2023–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +22%- NUNaropa University2× · 2023–2024 · $250k · revenue +22%
- KPKALW PUBLIC MEDIA INC3× · 2022–2024 · $200k · revenue +79%
Funded once
- PAPen Americaone grant, 2023 · $128k
- SPSTREET POETS INCone grant, 2023 · $102k · revenue -35%
- TFTHE FILM COLLABORATIVE INCone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +21%
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 invest in america's finest artists and illuminate the value of artists to society.
Provision of pro bono legal and consulting services to qualifying individuals/companies in the creative arts.
SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM connects and inspires audiences, students and teachers, and filmmakers through our film…
The Television Academy is dedicated to celebrating excellence, innovation and the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences through recognition, education and leadership, while fostering a diverse, inclusive and accessible…
Ciis is an institution of higher education that encourages an interdisciplinary approach to learning. over 1,700 students are enrolled in masters, doctoral, bachelor of arts completion programs, and certifications. ours is a mosaic of…
To facilitate collaboration, innovation, strategic growth and cultural impact for the media arts field. We are a network of networks; we embolden creative media organization and artists and connect them with the world.
The Chicago School educates the next generation of change-makers in innovative theory and culturally competent practice to strengthen the integrated health of individuals, organizations, and communities.
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
California college of the arts educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. benefitting from its san francisco bay area location, the college prepares…
To harness the power of the human immune system and advanced computing technologies to create and translate scientific discoveries into next generation vaccines and therapies for prevention, control and cure of chronic diseases, enabling…
Stages makes plays and tells stories that invite everyone to live more deeply and love more boldly.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Create Now Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Stray Theater 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 21 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 15% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 35 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 NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Naropa University ↗
- Who funds KALW PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds HOLISTIC LIFE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Harvest Home Inc ↗
- Who funds PEN AMERICA LOS ANGELES FKA PEN CENTER USA WEST ↗
- Who funds John P McGovern Museum of Health & Medical Science ↗
- Who funds STREET POETS INC ↗
- Who funds Prison Yoga Project Inc ↗
- Who funds Swan Songs Musical Last Wishes ↗
- Who funds CREATIVE VISIONS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MOTUS THEATER ↗
- Who funds THE FILM COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds FISCAL SPONSORSHIP ALLIES INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds THE STRAY THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds CHRIS WILSON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HALFTHESTORY ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR CHILDHOOD DISEASES ↗
- Who funds CREATE NOW INC ↗
- Who funds THE HADANOU COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds PURPOSE BUILT FAMILIES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Yoga Alliance Registry ↗
- Who funds MUSIC & MEMORY INC ↗
- Who funds UPCHIEVE INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VISTA DEL MAR CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SCHOOL OF UNUSUAL LIFE LEARNING ↗
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: Unlikely Collaborators Inc · California Community Foundation · Rose Community Foundation · Communities Foundation of Texas Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Impactassetsinc · National Philanthropic Trust · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Unlikely Collaborators 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.
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Holistic Life Foundation Inc — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Unlikely Collaborators Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Unlikely Collaborators 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.