· Private foundation
Ws Johnston 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
- Under $10k3 grants · $9k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $193k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JOHNSTON RODGERS FUND - SCHWAB DONOR ADVISED FUND GIVING 360 | $96,474 |
| R JOHNSTON FAMILY FUND - SCHWAB DONOR ADVISED FUND GIVING 360 | $96,474 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC | $3,000 |
| COLORADO PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS CENTER | $3,000 |
| AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS | $2,500 |
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, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 33% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +60% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 3 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, 3% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $195k 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
- CPCOLORADO PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS CENTER INC8× · 2017–2025 · $27k · revenue +124%
PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC7× · 2017–2025 · $15k · revenue +12%- IRInternational Rescue Committee INC4× · 2020–2023 · $4k · revenue +63%
Funded once
- TATAMISCAL ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $2k
- CCColby-Sawyer Collegeone grant, 2017 · $1k · revenue -33%
THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $1k · revenue +34%
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 central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
The mission of lowell observatory is to pursue the study of astronomy, especially the study of our solar system and its evolution; to conduct pure research in astronomical phenomena; and to maintain quality public education and outreach…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
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.
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
Poptech's mission is to accelerate the positive impact of world-changing people, projects and ideas. founded in 1996 by bob metcalfe (inventor, ethernet) and john sculley (apple, pepsi), poptech originally provided a forum to critically…
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wounded Warrior Project Inc and the most unlike its peers is International Rescue Committee 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 41 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% 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 14% 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.
26 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. 26 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 COLORADO PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds THE ELM PROJECT ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD HIGH SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds The Center for Art in Wood Inc ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds SKY MIND RETREATS ↗
- Who funds Colby-Sawyer College ↗
- Who funds THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART INC ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds ABINGTON HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAINT JAMES SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds ST LUKE'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds LIVING DESERT THE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WOMEN'S LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds MATTIE N DIXON COMMUNITY CUPBOARD INC ↗
- Who funds OPERATION SMILE INC ↗
- Who funds BROAD STREET MINISTRY ↗
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: National Philanthropic Trust · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Ws Johnston 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.
- The Institute of Contemporary Art Inc — 1% of income from government
- St Luke's Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project 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 Ws Johnston Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ws Johnston 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.