Left-censoring
The first year of any dataset makes existing relationships look new.
A funding relationship that began before the earliest year on record appears, in that first year, to be starting. There is no way to distinguish a genuinely new grantee from a long-standing one whose earlier grants sit outside the window.
This is why the opening year of a trend is read with care and why a first-year intake wave is rarely meaningful. The effect only touches the earliest year; later years have prior history to compare against.
Related terms
Questions and answers
- What is a left-censoring?
- The first year of any dataset makes existing relationships look new. A funding relationship that began before the earliest year on record appears, in that first year, to be starting. There is no way to distinguish a genuinely new grantee from a long-standing one whose earlier grants sit outside the window.
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