New York · Nonprofit
WITNESS INC
WITNESS INC (New York) receives grants from 63 organizations whose IRS filings report $23,065,790 to it, the largest being THE FORD FOUNDATION ($4,166,667). 39 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $4.6M
- Funders on record
- 63
- Grants received
- $23M
- Net assets
- $12M
What Witness Inc does
Mission
Witness helps people use video and technology to protect and defend human rights. Witness is working towards a world where the communities we center, serve, and support can safely and effectively use video and technology to end human rights violations. A world where technology infrastructures account for the needs and aspirations of human rights defenders, instead of excluding or harming them, and the creative power of video and technology for catalyzing transformation can be realized.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Training and capacity building:witness trainings help fill critical gaps in the use of video for human rights, ensuring that the videos people often go to great lengths to capture can be trusted and verified; that the people who record these videos can stay safe and manage risk; that evidentiary videos can be found amidst mass volume; that movements and groups can use visual storytelling in strategic and impactful ways; and that new and existing technologies can enable greater citizen participation.each year, witness provides a series of in-person and virtual training to communities, human rights defenders, journalists, and civil society around the world, sharing resources, guidance, and tools around the safe, ethical, and effective use of video and technology for human rights.
$4,126,261 spentof which $77,517 as grants$12,013 earned by the program82% of program spendingTechnology threats and opportunities:building on a rich history of anticipating the challenges and opportunities posed by emerging technologies, witness remains laser-focused on ensuring that innovation operates in service of a healthy and informed society, while serving and protecting those who need it most. It engages actors across the human rights and technology ecosystem, bringing grassroots perspectives to global technology companies and scaling impact in the process. Witness utilizes an understanding of the real and unprecedented threats posed by emerging technologies to develop threat models, ensure companies take rights-respecting approaches, and collaborate on applied research. The organization is a thought leader and cross-sector convener, addressing the threats of synthetic media, deceptive ai, surveillance, and security facing the human rights movement at large.
$432,181 spent9% of program spendingLearning and sharing: a primary mechanism by which witness helps build the fabric of ecosystems is through the unique ability to learn and share, ensuring that guidance and tools can be adapted to, and shared with, communities facing similar issues around the world. As patterns of wrongdoing repeat themselves across borders and geographies, so too must the strategies and tactics for how video and technology can help realize opportunities and expose these abuses.
$349,033 spent7% of program spendingResource creationwitness online library enables people to access, download, and adapt a range of open source tips and guidance on how to use video more safely and effectively for human rights. Year after year, witness has seen an increase in the overall engagement with these resources, demonstrating appetite and need for its materials across issue areas, regions, and languages. The organization recognizes the strategic power of social media and digital platforms as tools to widely distribute information, as well as the fact that people worldwide are turning to these platforms to communicate and participate in society.
$147,159 spent3% of program spending
The 4 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $5,054,634.
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 $3.5M to $6.9M (+95%).
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: 2017 18% · 2021 7% · 2022 6% · 2023 17% · 2024 56% · 2025 34%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
84% of WITNESS INC’s revenue is contributions — about as donation-reliant as the typical peer (97% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 2 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
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.
Chief executive
Samuel Gregory
Executive director
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 21 funders to 25 funders, grant income rose $1.8M → $3.5M.
14 of 63 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 13% 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 WITNESS INC’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 63 funders by total. 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
WITNESS INC has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 18% of grant income, and it takes 4 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 4 funders to its left
27% 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 WITNESS INC.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 37% · 2018 47% · 2019 59% · 2020 19% · 2021 30% · 2022 43% · 2023 28% — diversifying over time.
“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.
How long its funders stay
40% of WITNESS INC's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 62% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
WITNESS INC draws 58% of its grant income from funders outside New York, across 13 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $3.0M arriving through sponsors registered in 9 states 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.
Against its field
WITNESS INC's funding base is broadening — from 21 funders to 25 as grant income climbed.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 718 international nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2025
Organizations like WITNESS INC
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In New York
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
69% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
77%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 4 states
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for WITNESS INC: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds WITNESS INC?
- WITNESS INC (New York) receives grants from 63 organizations whose IRS filings report $23,065,790 to it, the largest being THE FORD FOUNDATION ($4,166,667). 39 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does WITNESS INC have?
- IRS filings report 63 organizations giving $23,065,790 in grants to WITNESS INC, 39 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of WITNESS INC?
- THE FORD FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $4,166,667 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like WITNESS INC find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in New York. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 63 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing