· Private foundation
Willens Family 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $36k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $210k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $55k
- $250k+1 grant · $302k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Northwestern University Office of Alumni Relations & Development | $302,000 |
| Civic Soul | $55,134 |
| Doctors Without Borders USA | $37,600 |
| Med Access International | $37,600 |
| Caltech Advancement and Alumni Relations | $25,000 |
| My Block My Hood My City | $15,000 |
| CAMFED USA | $15,000 |
| Boca Raton Regional Hospital | $12,600 |
| Minds Matter NYC | $12,533 |
| Individual grant recipient | $12,533 |
| Matthew Larson Foundation for Pediatric Brain Tumors | $12,000 |
| The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center | $10,000 |
| Cancer Free Kids Pediatric Cancer Research Alliance | $10,000 |
| Sanctuary for Families | $10,000 |
| Breast Cancer Research Foundation | $9,600 |
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 (FY22–25, $31k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +14% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 8 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $149k 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
Northwestern University6× · 2020–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +33%
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC3× · 2023–2025 · $87k · revenue +1%- BRBoca Raton Regional Hospital Inc5× · 2021–2025 · $73k · revenue +28%
Funded once
- CCaltechone grant, 2024 · $26k
- CICALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGYone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +6%
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INCone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue -40%
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.
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…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The common application is a not-for-profit membership organization of over 1,100 colleges and universities across the globe committed to access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. every year, over 1.5 million students…
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
Commonwealth care alliance, inc.'s mission is to improve the health and well-being of people with significant needs by innovating, coordinating and providing the highest quality, individualized care.
Children's rights is a national advocacy organization that investigates, exposes, and combats violations of the rights of children. through strategic advocacy and civil rights impact litigation, children's rights holds governments…
Alternatives, inc.'s mission is to facilitate personal development,strengthen family relationships and enhance the community's well being. serving over 3,000 youth and families annually, the organization offers a range of counseling and…
Assist banner health complete its mission to make health care easier so life can be better by providing integrated & coordinated care & population health management.
To nourish the world's hungry through uniting and advancing food banks.
We generate ideas, produce evidence, and design solutions to improve the lives of underserved populations around the world. we take a multidisciplinary, intergenerational, life-cycle approach that contributes to (see schedule o)four global…
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Camfed Usa Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Indigenous Environmental Network. 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 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 61 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 Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds MED ACCESS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Boca Raton Regional Hospital Inc ↗
- Who funds Civic Soul ↗
- Who funds Community Food Bank Of New Jersey Inc ↗
- Who funds Role Model Movement Inc (NFP) ↗
- Who funds ASSISTING LIVES IN LAS VEGAS ↗
- Who funds MINDS MATTER OF NYC INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds SANCTUARY FOR FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds CAMFED USA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds URBAN INITIATIVES INC ↗
- Who funds MATTHEW LARSON FOUNDATION FOR PEDIATRIC ↗
- Who funds Ann & Robert H Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago Foundation ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds ABORTION CARE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds SANDY HOOK PROMISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CancerFree KIDS ↗
- Who funds INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK ↗
- Who funds THE BRIGID ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds THE BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION 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: The Blackbaud Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 organization Willens Family 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 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 Willens Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Willens Family 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.