· Private foundation
William J Shaw 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
83% of William J Shaw Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to University Of Notre Dame Du Lac, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 6 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year William J Shaw Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 6 organizations, $170k. 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $20k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $150k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY | $50,000 |
| DVS LEGAL SERVICES | $50,000 |
| ALL ABOUT YOU ADOPTIONS | $50,000 |
| BULLIS SCHOOL INC | $7,500 |
| CONNELLY SCHOOL OF THE HOLY CHILD | $7,000 |
| POTOMAC COMMUNITY RESOURCES INC | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $359k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 95% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 36% of William J Shaw Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
18 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2024, 12 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, 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 FY2025, 69% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $65k 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
- DLDVS LEGAL SERVICES INC9× · 2017–2025 · $375k · revenue +51% · 59% of their budget
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF WASHINGTON4× · 2017–2021 · $340k · revenue +40%
- AAALL ABOUT U ADOPTIONS INC8× · 2018–2025 · $225k · revenue +97%
Funded once
- SHSUBURBAN HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $104k · revenue +100%
- CRCATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICESone grant, 2022 · $35k
- NBNATIONAL BRAIN TUMOR SOCIETY INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue +38%
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.
The mission of dfci is to provide expert, compassionate, and equitable care to children, adults, and their families, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. we train new…
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Operate a state-of-the-art, world-class genomic research center that creates and uses advanced genomics to understand the genetic basis of disease. for more information, see schedule o.
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We champion the health needs of children and families. we are committed to improving children's health by providing the highest-quality, family centered care, advanced through research and education.
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Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
The mission of the institute is to translate basic genetic and molecular mechanisms of schizophrenia and related developmental brain disorders into clinical advances that change the lives of affected individuals. it is catalyzing a new…
The mission of children's hospital & research center at oakland is to protect and advance the health and well-being of children through clinical care, teaching and research.
Altarum is focused on improving the health of individuals with fewer financial resources and populations disenfranchised by the health care system. we drive impactful changes in four domains: 1) transform health service delivery - we work…
The Academy's mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all.
Ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T) is a genetic disease that causes loss of muscle control and balance, cancer, lung disease, and immune system problems in children and young adults, shortening their lives. The nonprofit A-T Children's Project…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of the Mid-Atlantic Inc and the most unlike its peers is Dvs Legal Services 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 32 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.
23 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. 23 of the 39 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 University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds DVS LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds ALL ABOUT U ADOPTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds SUBURBAN HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BULLIS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds OPERATION CANASTA INC ↗
- Who funds Mobile Medical Care Inc ↗
- Who funds ANNAPOLIS WELLNESS CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL BRAIN TUMOR SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds POTOMAC COMMUNITY RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds JUST TRYAN IT INC ↗
- Who funds New Alternatives for LGBT Homeless Youth Inc ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY COUNTY FAMILY JUSTICE CENTER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ENDOMETRIOSIS FOUNDATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds FRACTURED ATLAS INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN WITH NEUROIMMUNE DISORDERS INC ↗
- Who funds RAYMOND A WOOD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEW ALTERNATIVES FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF THE MID-ATLANTIC INC ↗
- Who funds Bridges from School to Work Inc ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association 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: Greater Washington Community Foundation · Clark Charitable Foundation Inc Dba a James & Alice B Clark Foundation · Clark-Winchcole Foundation · T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc · American Endowment Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund
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 William J Shaw 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Bridges from School to Work Inc — 33% of income from government
- Mobile Medical Care Inc — 17% of income from government
- Raymond a Wood Foundation 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.