American Bureau of Shipping
Spring, TX · EIN 13-4921556. Reported 76 grants totalling $6,158,231 to 23 organizations across tax years 2021-2024, on Form 990 Schedule I.
Does this grantmaker accept applications?
Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.
Three things in the filing do bear on it:
- What kind of organization it is. The IRS has no activity classification on file for this one, so we cannot tell you whether it is a community foundation or a single-institution support fund. The recipient list below is the better guide.
- How spread out its giving is. 23 distinct organizations, with 41% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is concentrated. Most of the money has a settled destination, and the remainder is what is realistically in play.
- How much its list changes. 89% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 3 year-to-year transitions. That is well above the 57% median for grantmaking charities, and above the 67% private foundations manage. This list is close to settled, so a newcomer has to displace someone rather than fill a gap.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $50,000. Half of what it reported fell between $40,000 and $60,000; the smallest was $6,500 and the largest $2,500,000. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.
Every organization it funded
This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.
| Organization | Location | Total received | Grants | Years funded | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Texas A&m Foundation | College Sta, TX | $2,500,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Alumni Association of the University of Michigan | Ann Arbor, MI | $350,500 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Texas A&m University | College Station, TX | $321,000 | 5 | 4 | 2024 |
| Webb Institute | Glen Cove, NY | $232,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Maine Maritime Academy | Castine, ME | $231,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Ma Maritime Academy Foundation Inc | Buzzards Bay, MA | $230,500 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Maritime Industry Museum at Fort Schuyler | Bronx, NY | $230,500 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Cambridge, MA | $230,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| United Way Worldwide | Alexandria, VA | $213,731 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| The Trustees of the Stevens Institute of Technology | Hoboken, NJ | $200,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Virginia Tech Foundation Inc | Blacksburg, VA | $200,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| California Maritime Academy Foundation Inc | Vallejo, CA | $180,500 | 5 | 4 | 2024 |
| The University of Houston Alumni Association Foundation | Houston, TX | $175,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Vanderbilt University | Nashville, TN | $165,000 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Colorado School of Mines Foundation | Golden, CO | $147,500 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| University of New Orleans Research & Technology Foundation Inc | New Orleans, LA | $130,500 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Texas A&m University | College Station, TX | $100,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| George Washington University | Ashburn, VA | $75,000 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Alabama a & M University Foundation | Normal, AL | $50,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| American National Red Cross | Washington, DC | $50,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Prairie View A&m Foundation | Houston, TX | $50,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Texas A&m University - Prairie View | Prairie View, TX | $50,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| US Merchant Marine Academy | Washington, DC | $45,500 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
18 of 23 (78%) received money in more than one year over the 4 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.
What the money was for
Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.
- Texas A&m University Foundation
ABS 2023 Funding of University Research. - Texas A&m University
ABS 2023 Scholarships for tuition and books. - University of Michigan
ABS 2024 Scholarships for tuition and books. - United Way
ABS 2024 Charitable Support. - Maine Maritime Academy
ABS 2022 Scholarships for tuition and books. - Texas A&m University - Galveston
ABS 2021 Scholarships for tuition and books.
What kind of organizations it funds
By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 18 of 23 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.
Giving by year
| Tax year | Grants reported | Total | Median grant |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 18 | $701,856 | $50,000 |
| 2022 | 19 | $956,131 | $50,000 |
| 2023 | 19 | $3,468,971 | $50,000 |
| 2024 | 20 | $1,031,273 | $50,000 |
Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.
Where its money goes
52% of its giving went to organizations in Texas. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.
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Funders that support the same organizations
These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.
How to approach this grantmaker
- Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
- Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $50,000 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
- Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Texas.
- Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.
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Where these numbers come from
Everything above is taken from American Bureau of Shipping's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2021-2024). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.
Address of record on the latest return: 1701 City Plaza Drive, Spring, TX, 77389.
EIN 13-4921556 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this
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