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· Public charity
VELA EDUCATION FUND
Custom education programs to meet families learners' needs, increasing awareness of nontraditional education, and accelerating adoption by more families and communities.
$6.2M
Granted FY2024
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Grants
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Communities
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Largest
01What you fund
01
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 93% of VELA EDUCATION FUND’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.
02beneath the categories
Past the labels — and the year it shifted
Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.
…and in their own words, year by year
2020
subgrants pandemicpandemic relieflearninginterestsgrade
2022
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2023
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2024
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Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2024
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
Grant detail is referenced in an attached schedule not included in the e-file. Total reported in the filing: $6,162,250.
$0
Median grant
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States reached
$21M
Total assets
02The need
04
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.
show:
Your human-services grants (FY20–20, $700k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8% — the area typically sits at 9%. 0% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
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; 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your field
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.
1
High Tech High Graduate School
To provide k-12 educators an opportunity to build upon their roles as teachers and leaders.
Education
2
The Seven Hills School
Educational instruction and activities to students ranging from pre-k through 8th grade.
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3
Gulf Stream School Inc
Education of grades pre-school through eighth grade.
Education
4
The Peak School
The peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
Education
5
Pluralistic School Inc
Provide elementary school education to students in grades kindergarten through sixth grade.
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6
Explorer West an Independent Middle
We empower young people to explore and grow their unique intellectual, ethical, and creative capabilities, and to treasure diversity and growth in others.
Education
7
The Miquon School
Quality private education provided as an alternative to the public school system.
Education
8
Khan Lab School
Khan lab school is a community of learners empowering every student to navigate their own path.
Education
9
Chicago Education Partnership
To create a school that dramatically transforms the lives of k-8 students and prepares them for success in college and in life through: the delivery of a rigorous and personalized academic program, a focus on holistic education, and the…
Education
10
Proof School
Offering a liberal arts education for kids who love math, reasoning and communication.
Education
11
New Classrooms Innovation Partners Inc
New classrooms innovation partners (new classrooms) believes it is possible to make the u.s. education system work for each and every student. we recognize that learning is personal. each student is different. and when schools can truly…
Education
12
Ghs Academy
Inspiring a love of learning and empowering each child to achieve their personal best.
Education
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Griptape Org Inc and the most unlike its peers is Home School Legal Defense Association. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
05the grantee network
10 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
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Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
10/10
Grantees still filing
7/10
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Other$31,194,941Education$925,500Human Services$700,000Community Improvement$445,000Environment$150,000
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 NATIONAL PARENTS UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds 40 SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds CAMELBACK VENTURES ↗
- Who funds HOME SCHOOL LEGAL DEFENSE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds YOUTH ENTREPRENEURS ↗
- Who funds GRIPTAPE INC ↗
- Who funds TETON SCIENCE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NEVADA ACTION FOR SCHOOL OPTIONS ↗
- Who funds HLS CREATIVE ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds HIGH SCHOOL FOR RECORDING ARTS ↗
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.
New Schools FundCA15.7× affinity5 shared granteesties to 6 of 6Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: New Schools Fund · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · 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 organisation VELA EDUCATION FUND 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.
2024
’20’21’22’23’24
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
1get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
typical government reliance, FY20–24
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. 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.
04Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: HLS CREATIVE ACADEMY.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
medium risk
~3 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 5 filed years.
Track record & reputation
low risk
5 years of Form 990 filings, still active; revenue up 24.1× since.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 842310816 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on HLS CREATIVE ACADEMY, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- WatchFinancial stability— Roughly 3 months of cash on hand.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue grew over the period.
- WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 60% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Vela Education Fund?
Find your warmest path to Vela Education Fund through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines