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Foundation Dossiers

Virginia · Public charity

Zcash Foundation

The Zcash Foundation is a public charity that builds financial privacy infrastructure for the public good, primarily serving the users of the Zcash protocol and blockchain. The Foundation also supports other applications of zero-knowledge cryptography, as well as other approaches to private cryptocurrency.

$3.1M
Granted FY2022
1
Itemized grants FY2022
1
Organizations funded FY2022
0%
First-time grantees FY2022
Read the full brief
Itemized, FY2022
$316k
The rest is grants the schedule does not break out
Median grant, FY2022
$316,404
Largest grant, FY2022
$316,404
Organizations funded a year
1 to 1
FY2019 to FY2022
States reached, FY2022
1
Total assets, FY2022
$23M

How open it is to new grantees

In FY2022, 0% of the organizations Zcash Foundation funded were first-time grantees, receiving 0% of its grant dollars.

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2022, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’21’22
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as new. Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
The numbers by year
Fiscal yearOrganizations fundedTo those organizationsFirst-time grantees
FY20221$316k0%
FY20211$673k100%
FY20191$15kn/a
100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2019 to 2022.

Science & Tech$990kCivil Rights$15k

Top grantees

Largest recipients by total granted, FY2019 to FY2022, and the share of each one’s budget the grants supplied at peak.

GranteeTotal grantedYearsShare of their budget
The Tor Project Inc$989,60449%
Human Rights Foundation Inc$15,00020%

Compare Zcash Foundation with peer funders

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Zcash Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Zcash 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.

About Zcash Foundation

How much does Zcash Foundation give?
Zcash Foundation reported 1 itemized grants totaling $316,404, out of $3,089,320 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2022 IRS filing. It funded between 1 and 1 organizations a year over FY2019 to FY2022.
What does Zcash Foundation fund?
By grant dollars over FY2019 to FY2022, its largest causes are Science & Tech (99%), Civil Rights (1%).
Who are Zcash Foundation's largest grantees?
By total granted over FY2019 to FY2022: The Tor Project Inc ($990k), Human Rights Foundation Inc ($15k).
Does Zcash Foundation fund new organizations?
In FY2022, 0% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.
Where is Zcash Foundation based?
Zcash Foundation is based in VA.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 2 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2022, released 2022. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports $4.8M of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2022, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

Source object · view filing

Play a game based on Zcash’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home