· Private foundation
Barlow Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $440k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CALIFORNIA TROUT | $190,000 |
| WILD AFRICA FUND | $100,000 |
| SONOMA COUNTY VINTNERS FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| PLEDGE TO HUMANITY | $50,000 |
| GATEWAY PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $30,000 |
| JOYBOUND PEOPLE & PETS - FKA TONY LA RUSSA'S ANIMAL RESCUE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| CONSERVATION SOCIETY OF CA - AKA OAKLAND ZOO | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $295k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 12% of Barlow Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 91% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 81% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +42% since the first grant, against +42% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $130k 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
- CTCALIFORNIA TROUT INC8× · 2017–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +396%
- TNThe National Film Preserve Ltd2× · 2020–2021 · $1.0M · revenue +336%
- WIWILDAID INC4× · 2020–2023 · $265k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- KAKELLY AND CARRIE BARLOW DONOR ADVISED FUNDone grant, 2020 · $115k
- GWGREATER WASHINGTON EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION INCone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue +14%
- TNThe Northern Trust Charitable Givinone grant, 2022 · $100k
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.
The mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.
The association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
To enhance the long-term viability of california agriculture through leadership development, which in turn benefits the people and communities that agriculture serves. we grow leaders who make a difference.
See schedule okqed serves the people of northern california with a community-supported alternative to commercial media, providing the knowledge needed to make informed decisions; convening community dialogue; bringing the arts to everyone;…
The california dental association is committed to the success of our members in service to their patients and the public.
The foundation's mission is to improve the oral health of all californians by supporting the dental profession and its efforts to meet community needs.
Golden gate university prepares individuals to lead and serve by providing high quality, practice-based educational programs in law, taxation, business and related professions - as a nonprofit institution - in an innovative and challenging…
To support educational, research and public functions and programs of the riverside campus of the university of california.
To promote philanthropy to make santa cruz county a better place to live, now and in the future.we bring together people, ideas, and resources to inspire philanthropy and accomplish great things.
The uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
California college of the arts educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. benefitting from its san francisco bay area location, the college prepares…
Pitzer College produces engaged socially responsible citizens of the world through an academically rigorous, interdisciplinary liberal arts education emphasizing social justice, intercultural understanding and environmental sensitivity.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Basic Fund and the most unlike its peers is The National Film Preserve Ltd. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 32 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 42 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 CALIFORNIA TROUT INC ↗
- Who funds The National Film Preserve Ltd ↗
- Who funds DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds WILDAID INC ↗
- Who funds Pledge to Humanity ↗
- Who funds SONOMA COUNTY VINTNERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation ↗
- Who funds GATEWAY PUBLIC SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds GREATER WASHINGTON EDUCATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE POSSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WILD AFRICA ↗
- Who funds CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE NAPA VALLEY ↗
- Who funds SONOMA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BASIC FUND ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION SOCIETY OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds THE JF KAPNEK CHARITABLE TRUST ↗
- Who funds NORTH VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Joybound People and Pets FKA Tony La Russa's Animal Rescue Foundation ↗
- Who funds MONUMENT CRISIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Moraga Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds ENVISION EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds KIPP BAY AREA SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Project Open Hand ↗
- Who funds COME TO BELIEVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Lafayette Partners in Education ↗
- Who funds LINDSAY WILDLIFE MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Las Trampas School Inc ↗
- Who funds Telluride Historical Museum Inc ↗
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: Marin Community Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · United Way of the Bay Area · Hamel Family Foundation Inc · McLIN FAMILY FOUNDATION · Oshay Family Foundation · American Endowment 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 Barlow Family 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.
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.