· Private foundation
Audacious Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $100k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $95k
- $250k+2 grants · $754k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Wilderness Youth Project Incorporated | $503,900 |
| Explore Ecology | $250,000 |
| Children and Family Resource Services | $95,000 |
| Golden State South MTB | $45,000 |
| Children and Nature Network | $27,500 |
| Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital Foundation | $15,000 |
| Santa Maria Valley YMCA | $12,000 |
| The Foundation Roundtable | $6,500 |
| Channel Islands YMCA | $5,011 |
| Santa Barbara Foundation | $3,000 |
| Santa Ynez Valley Botanic Garden | $2,000 |
| Santa Maria Valley YMCA | $2,000 |
| Starr-King Parent-Child Workshop | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $258 |
| Communities in Schools of Richmond | $258 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $478k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +46% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
52 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 43 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $90k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- WYWilderness Youth Project Inc6× · 2017–2025 · $2.8M · revenue +359% · 25% of their budget
- EEEXPLORE ECOLOGY5× · 2017–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +119%
- SBSANTA BARBARA BICYCLE COALITION DBA MOVE SANTA BARBARA COUNTY4× · 2017–2022 · $362k · revenue +58%
Funded once
- CACHILDREN AND FAMILY RESOURCE SERVICone grant, 2019 · $1.0M
- SBSANTA BARBARA COUNTY EDUCATION OFFIone grant, 2017 · $938k
- WYWILDERNESS YOUTH PROJECT INCORPORATone grant, 2019 · $850k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
Santa Barbara Education Foundation (SBEF) provides and supports programs that enrich the academic, artistic, and personal development of all students in the Santa Barbara Unified School District.
To provide a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum which prepares students to enter higher education and occupations in their communities with an understanding of their geographic and historical roots and the goals toward which they can…
Provide a high standard of education to students through comprehensive curriculum supported by energetic, dynamic, and caring teachers.
To focus on the success of each student & involve parents in the education of their children. the school is comitted to providing appropriate physical space, materials, qualified personnel, and staff development in order to guide the…
The buckley school is a dynamic, nurturing learning community committed to equity and inclusion. our innovative teachers and challenging programs inspire creativity, courage, and collaboration. by promoting a balanced development of mind,…
Provide a high standard of education to students through comprehensive curriculum supported by energetic, dynamic, and caring teachers.
To create an environment that fosters a high quality educational experience for all children. we strive to prepare students for college and career by holding high academic expectations, nurturing positive social-emotional growth,…
A private school that cultivates and celebrates the intellectual, imaginative, and humanitarian promise of each student in a community that practices mutual respect, embraces diversity, and inspires passion for learning.
Our mission at rvc is to encourage curiosity and inquiry, foster cultural competency and social-emotional learning, and develop a confident love of learning. our program goes beyond progressive education by using inquiry, exploration,…
Our mission is to spark wonder and intellectual curiosity in each child. We achieve this through a purposeful blend of:Engaging academics custom-tailored to each child's abilities, strengths and interests;An unparalleled social-emotional…
The mission of tlc is to educate diverse students through a rigorous, standards-based, collegepreparatory program to become conscientious, caring, and responsible 21st century citizens. tlc is grounded in an inclusive vision of teaching…
South sutter charter school is an independent study charter school that provides a voluntary public educational choice for families of students who choose to educate their children in the home environment.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Santa Barbara County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Mckinley Elementary School Pta. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 39 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 15% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
72 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 72 of the 143 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds Wilderness Youth Project Inc ↗
- Who funds EXPLORE ECOLOGY ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA BICYCLE COALITION DBA MOVE SANTA BARBARA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN AND FAMILY RESOURCE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CLINICAS DEL CAMINO REAL INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL SKILLS AMERICA ↗
- Who funds CHILDRENS CREATIVE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds NATURE TRACK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA MIDDLE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds VENTURA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Channel Islands Young Men's Christian Association ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THERAPY DOGS OF SANTA BARBARA INC ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAMINO NUEVO CHARTER ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF RICHMOND INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BIKEVENTURA ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD CALIFORNIA CENTRAL COAST ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Santa Barbara Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · Towbes Foundation · James S Bower Foundation · The Wood-Claeyssens Foundation · Mosher Foundation · Ann Jackson Family Foundation · The Kirby-Jones Foundation · June G Outhwaite Charitable Trust JS Poucher KL Englert & CM Cooney Co-Tr · The McCune Foundation · Patricia Bragg Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Audacious Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- National Park Trust Inc — 51% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Audacious Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Audacious Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.