· Private foundation
Vital Projects Fund Inc
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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k28 grants · $605k
- $50k–250k55 grants · $5.4M
- $250k+7 grants · $9.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FUNDS INC | $3,850,000 |
| PROTEUS FUND | $2,753,000 |
| CHEF ANN FOUNDATION | $1,250,000 |
| ASSOCIATION FOR THE PUBLIC DEFENDER OF MARYLAND | $500,000 |
| LOUISIANA PAROLE PROJECT INC | $470,000 |
| TEXAS DEFENDER SERVICE | $400,000 |
| CIVIL RIGHTS CORPS | $350,000 |
| MITCHELL HAMLINE SCHOOL OF LAW | $230,000 |
| ACLU OF MICHIGAN FOUNDATION | $210,000 |
| DUKE UNIVERSITY | $206,000 |
| THE POLITICAL REPORT INC | $200,000 |
| ARIZONA CAPITAL REPRESENTATION PROJECT | $200,000 |
| DEEP SOUTH TODAY | $175,000 |
| YALE UNIVERSITY | $170,500 |
| PAROLE PREPARATION PROJECT INC | $150,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $1.8M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 92% 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.
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 +19% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
154 repeat relationships — 78 still active in FY2025, 76 since wound down; 12 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $755k 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
- CACHEF ANN FOUNDATION5× · 2021–2025 · $2.0M · revenue ×15
- LPLOUISIANA PAROLE PROJECT INC5× · 2021–2025 · $1.9M · revenue +124%
- TDTexas Defender Service5× · 2021–2025 · $1.6M · revenue +76%
Funded once
PORTLAND INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $397k · revenue +52% · 30% of their budget- IRINVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS & EDITORS INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $282k · revenue +32%
- WIWomen in California Leadership Incone grant, 2024 · $165k · revenue 0%
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.
Council for court excellence's (cce's) mission is to bring people together to conduct research, educate, and advocate to make d.c.'s unique legal systems more just, equitable, and accountable to the community.
The marshall project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering criminal justice.
CITY REPORT, INC. serves the people of New York through independent journalism that answers their information needs and holds the powerful to account.
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
Oad strives to ensure that poor people convicted of felonies receive full and equal access to justice by providing exceptional appellate representation, improving the quality of indigent defense representation through education & training,…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
The fines and fees justice center, inc. ("ffjc") is the only national organization focused exclusively on the unjust and harmful fines and fees imposed in the legal system. through education and advocacy, ffjc works to create a justice…
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
To bring quality public television programs and resources to communities throughout new jersey and its tri-state neighbors. its content, both on-air and online, aims to reflect the diverse
Pro publica is an independent, non-profit, pulitzer prize-winning newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories. [see continuation on schedule o] we produce…
Iaf's purpose is to conduct research and publicize findings concerning citizen's attitudes about economic options confronting america. iaf is devoted to fostering a robust and democratic debate about ideas that will shape our country's…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Donnie Shell Scholarship Foundation. 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 31 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
195 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. 195 of the 255 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 PROTEUS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CHEF ANN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOUISIANA PAROLE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Texas Defender Service ↗
- Who funds CIVIL RIGHTS CORPS ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MITCHELL HAMLINE SCHOOL OF LAW ↗
- Who funds THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE TULANE EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds CITY HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR RESEARCH ON SCHIZOPHRENIA AND DEPRESSION ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ASSOC FOR THE PUBLIC DEFENDER OF MARYLAND LTD ↗
- Who funds Arizona Capital Representation Project ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds SAFE & JUST MICHIGAN ↗
- Who funds NURSE-FAMILY PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds Museum of Modern Art ↗
- Who funds THE POLITICAL REPORT INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILIES AGAINST MANDATORY MINIMUMS ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS (SEE) INC ↗
- Who funds PAROLE PREPARATION PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE CLEMENCY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds HOPEWELL FUND ↗
- Who funds PLAYERS PHILANTHROPY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE MARFAN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds University of San Francisco ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL RELIGIOUS CAMPAIGN AGAINST TORTURE ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY NEW YORK CITY AND WESTCHERSTER COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds SECOND LOOK PROJECT ↗
- Who funds PREGNANCY JUSTICE 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: Proteus Fund Inc · Foundation to Promote Open Society · Public Welfare Foundation Inc · The Ford Foundation · Laura and John Arnold Foundation · Jewish Communal Fund · The Just Trust for Education · The Tow Foundation Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Fund for Nonviolence · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation 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 Vital Projects Fund Inc 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.
- Oregon Justice Resource Center — 26% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Advancing Real Change Inc — 12% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Planned Parenthood of the Columbia Willamette Inc — 7% of income from government
- The Center for Independent Documentary Inc — 6% of income from government
- Portland Institute for Contemporary Art — 5% of income from government
- Connecticut Public Broadcasting Inc — 3% of income from government
- Lewis & Clark College — 2% of income from government
- The Ridgefield Playhouse for Movies and the Performing Arts Inc — 1% 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 Vital Projects Fund Inc?
Find your warmest path to Vital Projects Fund Inc 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.