Reference · Glossary
US grantmaking glossary
Plain definitions of the terms behind the data on this site, from the kinds of grantmaker to the classifications and measures used throughout. Each links to where it shows up in the reports.
Donor-advised fund
A charitable account a donor funds upfront for the tax deduction, then recommends grants from over time.
Form 990
The annual information return most US tax-exempt organizations file with the IRS.
NTEE code
The IRS classification that sorts a nonprofit into a cause area such as education or health.
EIN (Employer Identification Number)
The nine-digit number that uniquely identifies a US organization to the IRS.
Private foundation
A grantmaking charity, usually endowed by a single source, that files Form 990-PF.
Community foundation
A public charity that pools donations to fund causes in a specific place.
Fiscal sponsor
An established charity that receives grants on behalf of a project without its own tax-exempt status.
Regranter (intermediary)
An organization that both receives and makes grants, sitting between funders and the charities doing the work.
Co-funder graph
The network linking funders that support the same organizations.
In-state share
The share of a state's grant dollars that stay within that state.
Itemized grant
A single grant listed by name on a filing, as opposed to a total.
Schedule I
The Form 990 schedule listing grants to US organizations, above a $5,000 threshold.
Filing lag
The 12 to 24 months between a foundation's activity and the public availability of its return.
Recipient resolution
Working out which organization a grant recipient name refers to, when the filer gave no EIN.
Co-funding affinity
How much two funders overlap relative to what their sizes alone would predict.
Assortativity
Whether funders in a group tend to connect to others like themselves.
Effective number of funders
How many equally-sized funders would produce the same concentration as the real, uneven set.
Concentration
How much of a funder's giving, or an organization's income, sits with a few counterparties.
Left-censoring
The first year of any dataset makes existing relationships look new.
Mission embedding
A numeric representation of what an organization says it does, used to compare missions.
Extracted tie
A relationship a language model read out of public text rather than a filing.
Pass-through
A grant to an organization that regrants it, so the recorded recipient is not the final one.
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 camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines