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Van Baren Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Van Baren 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.

$9k
Granted FY2025still arriving
6
Grants FY2025still arriving
4
States reached
$7k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2025.

Religion$46kEducation$550Crime & Legal$100
02FY2025 · 6 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$100
Median grant
4
States reached
$111k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
FAITH UNITED REFORMED CHURCH$7,311
BETHEL ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH$1,587
ELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES$100
CHRIST THE KING ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH$20
CRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH$8
COMMUNITY UNITED REFORMED CHURCH$5
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 33% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: $50 → 7%CHRIST THE KING ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: $20 → 10%HULL PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $6 → 8%GRACE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $66 → 8%TRINITY UNITED REFORMED CHURCH: $12 → 11%BETHEL ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: $2k → 13%ASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATION INC: $8k → 15%BETHEL PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $7 → 7%CRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $6k → 7%ELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES: $150 → 14%CHRIST THE KING ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: $20 → 10%GRACE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $53 → 8%FIRST PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $28 → 11%BETHEL ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: $122 → 13%ASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATION INC: $2k → 15%CRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $6k → 7%ELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES: $100 → 14%GRACE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $14 → 8%FIRST PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $27 → 11%ASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATION INC: $1k → 15%CRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $4k → 7%ELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES: $100 → 14%HOPE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $14 → 8%ASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATION INC: $800 → 15%CRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $4k → 7%ELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES: $100 → 14%ASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATION INC: $700 → 15%CRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $116 → 7%ELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES: $100 → 14%PEACE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $224 → 15%CRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $8 → 7%CORNERSTONE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $52 → 15%FAITH UNITED REFORMED CHURCH: $7k → 7%CORNERSTONE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $50 → 15%FAITH UNITED REFORMED CHURCH: $3k → 7%CORNERSTONE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $21 → 15%COMMUNITY UNITED REFORMED CHURCH: $5 → 15%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

99%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$46k · 9 repeat orgs$440 to everyone else

9 repeat relationships: 5 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

9
8

Total granted

$46k
$435

Still filing today

22%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5 went to new ones.

50%100%’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • CP
    CRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH
    6× · 2020–2025 · $20k
  • AF
    ASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATION
    5× · 2020–2024 · $12k · revenue +31%
  • FU
    Faith United Reformed Church
    2× · 2024–2025 · $11k

Funded once

  • PP
    PEACE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH
    one grant, 2021 · $224
  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    one grant, 2023 · $100
  • TO
    THE ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
    one grant, 2024 · $50
How this is measured

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

04Its field
04the grantee network

2 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 2 of the 18 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
2/2
Grantees still filing
2/2
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

CRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCH: $20,159 · OtherCRETE PROTESTANT REFORMED CHURCHASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATION: $12,400 · OtherASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATIONFaith United Reformed Church: $10,655 · OtherFaith United Reformed ChurchBETHEL ORTHODOX PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: $1,709 · Other+13 more: $791 · OtherELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES: $550 · Education
Other$45,714Education$550

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATION: $12,400 over 5y, 0.3% of budgetELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES: $550 over 5y, 0.0% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds ASSOCIATION FOR PROTESTANT REFORMED EDUCATION ↗
  • Who funds ELIM CHRISTIAN SERVICES ↗

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a set of overlaps that mostly run through this funder rather than between each other.

Fidelity Investments …
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift FundMA3.5× affinity5 shared granteesties to 0 of 0Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Van Baren Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Van Baren Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2025
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    1report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 18 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its 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.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Van Baren’s filings →

    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 endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home