· Private foundation
W Paul Starkey Foundation
Its FY2023 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
91% of W Paul Starkey Foundation’s FY2023 grant dollars went to Schwab Charitable Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2023 names 25 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year W Paul Starkey Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 31 organizations, $9k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JUDICIAL WATCH | $1,000 |
| HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $800 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $500 |
| WASHINGTON COLLEGE | $500 |
| CATO INSTITUTE | $400 |
| RADCLIFF CREEK SCHOOL | $400 |
| SHORERIVERS | $400 |
| KENT SCHOOL | $400 |
| Individual grant recipient | $300 |
| BLUE HILL HOSPITAL | $300 |
| BLUE HILL FIRE DEPARTMENT | $300 |
| PENINSULA AMBULANCE CORPS | $250 |
| ST GEORGE'S SCHOOL | $250 |
| USO | $200 |
| INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS | $200 |
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 (FY17–23, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% 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 +42% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
62 repeat relationships — 45 still active in FY2022, 17 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2023, 68% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
JUDICIAL WATCH INC6× · 2017–2022 · $6k · revenue +141%- KSKENT SCHOOL INC7× · 2017–2023 · $5k · revenue +32%
- WCWASHINGTON COLLEGE7× · 2017–2023 · $4k · revenue +21%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $300
- SRSASSAFRASS RIVER ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2017 · $200
- CRCHESTER RIVER ASSOCIATION INCone grant, 2017 · $200
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.
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.
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…
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
Williams College strives to achieve educational excellence by fostering a community of learning in collaboration with students, faculty, staff, devoted alumni and parents.
Saint anselm is a catholic, benedictine college providing all of its students a distinctive liberal arts education that incorporates opportunities for professional and career preparation. it does so in a learning community that encourages…
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
The mission of westminster college is to help students develop competencies, commitments, and characteristics which have distinguished human beings at their best. see continuation on schedule o.the liberal arts tradition is the foundation…
HMC seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities, social sciences and the arts so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
Dedicated to learning, personal growth, knowledge creation, and the betterment of society. the university engages students in aquiring the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to thrive in and contribute to a pluralistic, complex world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The William a Farnsworth Library and Art Museum 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 53 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 17% 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.
53 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. 53 of the 83 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 DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds KENT SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RADCLIFFE CREEK SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds SHORERIVERS INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ST GEORGE'S SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA AMBULANCE CORPS ↗
- Who funds THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF KENT COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds BLUE HILL PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds EASTERN SHORE LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds Chester River Hospital Center Inc ↗
- Who funds BONNELL COVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WHYY INC ↗
- Who funds HOLDERNESS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds ECHO HILL OUTDOOR SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds THE USMMA SAILING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Middlebury College ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds CARDIGAN MOUNTAIN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Maine Maritime Museum ↗
- Who funds MARINE TOYS FOR TOTS FOUNDATION ↗
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: David a Bramble Foundation Inc · Mid Shore Community Foundation Inc · Fordi Family Foundation Inc · Maine Community Foundation Inc · Lynn W and Timothy W Peters Family Foundation · Baltimore Community Foundation Inc · Gladwood Foundation · The Jana Fund · The Martin Foundation · Francis T & Louis T Nichols Foundation · Schumann Robert F Fdn-Main · Davis Family 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 organization W Paul Starkey 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Eastern Shore Land Conservancy Inc — 100% of income from government
- Shorerivers Inc — 13% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- Echo Hill Outdoor School Inc — 5% of income from government
- Mystic Seaport Museum Inc — 5% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 1% of income from government
- Endicott College — 1% of income from government
- Washington College — 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.