· Private foundation
Whalesback 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $50k–250k1 grant · $77k
- $250k+1 grant · $438k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SCHWAB CHARITABLE DONOR ADVISED FUND | $437,625 |
| SCHWAB CHARITABLE DONOR ADVISED FUND | $76,625 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 66% of your 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 +40% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 28 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- COCOUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS INC6× · 2017–2022 · $300k · revenue +18%
Woodwell Climate Research Center Inc7× · 2017–2024 · $256k · revenue +123%- CFCENTER FOR CLIMATE AND ENERGY SOLUTIONS INC6× · 2017–2022 · $215k · revenue +330%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $34k
- COCENTER ON GLOBAL ENERGY POLICYone grant, 2022 · $15k
NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +24%
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.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The wildlife society's mission is to inspire, empower, and enable wildlife professionals to sustain wildlife populations and habitats through science-based management and conservation.
The climate institute is organized for the purpose of educating the general public and policy makers as to the gravity of potential climate change, exploring the policy implications of the latest scientific findings on climate modelling…
We harness the power of plants for humankind and share the joy and beauty of tropical gardening with everyone. fairchild tropical botanic garden is a museum of tropical plants within a world famous, 83-acre designed landscape. it was…
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
The mission is "to understand the natural world and inspire everyone to care for it." the academy implements its mission through understanding the diversity of life; developing and applying science to protect the environment; and informing…
The purpose of rainforest foundation us is to support indigenous peoples and forest communities in their efforts to secure their lands, protect their environment, and uphold their rights.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy Inc and the most unlike its peers is Lemur Conservation Foundation 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 48 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 55 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 American Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS INC ↗
- Who funds Woodwell Climate Research Center Inc ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CLIMATE AND ENERGY SOLUTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BROOKLYN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHERIFF'S MEADOW FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BIODIVERSITYWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds NAVY SEAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE HOWARD UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE MONTANA LAND RELIANCE ↗
- Who funds Lemur Conservation Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Brooklyn Heights Association Inc ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB ↗
- Who funds Atlantic Salmon Federation (US) Inc ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF THE NEW YORK SOCIETY LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS ↗
- Who funds BIODIVERSITY WORKS ↗
- Who funds ECOAMERICA ↗
- Who funds ISLAND PRESS ↗
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: Jewish Communal Fund · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 organization Whalesback 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.
- Woodwell Climate Research Center Inc — 11% of income from government
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
- Sheriff's Meadow Foundation — 2% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Biodiversityworks Inc — 0% of income from government
- Ceres Inc — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Whalesback Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Whalesback 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.