FOUNDATION FOR CRITICAL THINKING

What Foundation for Critical Thinking does

The organization over time

Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.

Balance sheet

Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2018 to 2019, from $1.4M to $772k (−43%).

How it's funded, over time

Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.

Government-grant reliance: 2021 25%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.

Surplus & reserves

Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 7 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.

Leadership and staff

The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.

The chief executive listed changed between the FY2019 and FY2020, and between the FY2020 and FY2021 filings.

Who funds it, year by year

2019 → 2023: the base held at 1 funder, grant income rose $40 → $171.

1 of 2 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 96% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.

From the IRS filings of FOUNDATION FOR CRITICAL THINKING’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.

How concentrated its funding is

FOUNDATION FOR CRITICAL THINKING leans on a few funders — its largest provides 96% of grant income and the top three 100%; half comes from just 1 funder.

96% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund FOUNDATION FOR CRITICAL THINKING.

Largest funder’s share by year: 2019 100% · 2020 100% · 2021 100% · 2022 100% · 2023 100% — broadly stable.

“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.

Where its funders are

96% of FOUNDATION FOR CRITICAL THINKING's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Of the $40 that is directly attributable, 100% of it comes from funders outside California, across 1 state.

Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $896 arriving through sponsors registered in 1 state is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.