How much does Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation give?

Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation reported 58 grants totaling $1,177,300 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 44 and 58 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Civil Rights (26%), International (21%), Environment (7%).

Who are Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: T'Ruah ($357k), Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law ($329k), Ploughshares Fund Inc ($313k).

Does Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 21% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Tides Foundation, Boston Foundation Inc, Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.

Where is Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation based?

Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation is based in MA.

Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation

Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable 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.

$1.2M

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$670k

Largest

01What it funds

0196% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Civil Rights$1.4MInternational$1.1MEnvironment$383kRecreation & Sports$311kEducation$231kPhilanthropy$229kScience & Tech$190kPublic Benefit$180kOther$0

02FY2025 · 58 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k37 grants · $146k
$10k–50k20 grants · $361k
$250k+1 grant · $670k

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$5.0M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Individual grant recipient	$670,000
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND	$40,000
ALL OUT ADVENTURES	$33,000
T'RUAH	$30,000
FEEDING AMERICA	$25,000
OXFAM AMERICA	$25,000
TESSERACT RESEARCH CENTER	$20,000
LAWYERS COMMITTEE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS	$20,000
BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE	$20,000
PATHFINDER INTERNATIONAL	$20,000
MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCE	$15,000
TRANSGENER EMERGENCY FUND OF MA	$15,000
UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS	$15,000
CENTRAL ASIA INSTITUTE	$12,000
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL	$11,000

02The need

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:

Its human-services grants (FY17–25, $110k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

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.

Which US states its grants reach

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.

81%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$4.2M · 87 repeat orgs$989k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +31% since the first grant, against 0% for those funded once.

87 repeat relationships: 50 still active in FY2025, 37 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$4.2M

$277k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+31%

Still filing today

74%

50%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 39% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $712k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

InternationalCivil RightsHealthEducationHuman ServicesEnvironmentOther

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

T
T'RUAH
9× · 2017–2025 · $357k · revenue +103%
LC
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
9× · 2017–2025 · $329k · revenue +94%
AO
ALL OUT ADVENTURES INC
9× · 2017–2025 · $276k · revenue +120%

Funded once

CF
Center for AI Safety Inc
one grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue 0%
TT
TAG TREATMENT ACTION GROUP INCgraduated
one grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +32%
PV
PROJECT VOTE INC
one grant, 2017 · $20k

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

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Actionaid Usa

Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…

Social Science

Asociacion Interamericana Para La Defensa Del Ambiente

To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.

Crime & Legal

Indigenous Peoples Rights Inc

To lead and coordinate the global initiative to address and prevent criminalization, violence, and impunity against indigenous peoples towards strengthening their collectives, solidarity, and actions.

Human Services

International Aids Vaccine Initiative Inc

A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.

International

Open Markets Institute

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.

Education

Women Donors Network

Women donors network advances a just, equitable, and sustainable world through the power of philanthropy, women's leadership, and collective and individual action.

Philanthropy

World Resources Institute

Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…

International

Center for International Environmental Law Inc

To investigate, research, write, publish, present conferences and teach with respect to global, regional, transboundary, and comparative environmental issues and to make the findings from such activities available to the general public; to…

International

Population Action International

Pai advances evidence, policies and programs to enable women, youth and at-risk communities to access sexual and reproductive health as core to health equity, climate resilience, economic well-being and gender equality.

Health

Center for International Policy Inc

The center for international policy is a woman-led, progressive, independent nonprofit center for research, education, and advocacy working to advance a more peaceful, just, and sustainable u.s. approach to foreign policy. through…

International

Environmental Investigation Agency

To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.

International

Waterorg

Water.org's goal is to bring safe water and sanitation to the world through access to small, affordable loans.

International

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Families for Justice As Healing Inc; the most unlike its peers is Appalachian Sustainable Development. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

95 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

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 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 95 of the 133 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.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

87/95

Grantees still filing

59/95

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$2,145,315International$1,527,100Civil Rights$573,500Environment$366,100Health$348,800Education$224,950Philanthropy$220,500

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

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.

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 tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Tides FoundationCA23.2× affinity16 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Tides Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Select Equity Group Foundation · Proteus Fund Inc · Hopewell Fund · The Beveridge Family Foundation · Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston Inc · The Ford Foundation · Jewish Communal 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 Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

12get no government money at all

9report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

4rely on government for over half their income

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Vivian & Paul Olum Charitable 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.

Play a game based on Vivian & Paul Olum’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