· Private foundation
Bay Area Barns and Trails
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Bay Area Ridge Trail Council | $7,500 |
| Volunteers for Outdoor California | $5,000 |
| Friends of Bear Creek Stables | $4,755 |
| Mounted Patrol Foundation | $4,000 |
| Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation | $2,500 |
| Point Reyes National Seashore Association | $2,450 |
| Equestrian Center of Walnut Creek | $2,150 |
| Sonoma Ecology Center | $2,000 |
| Square Peg Foundation | $1,250 |
| Equi Ed | $1,250 |
| Santa Clara Horsemen's Association | $400 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 99% of your 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 +54% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 2 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- VFVOLUNTEERS FOR OUTDOOR CALIFORNIA8× · 2017–2025 · $37k · revenue +86%
- BABay Area Ridge Trail Council7× · 2017–2025 · $30k · revenue +71%
- MSMARIN STABLES & TRAILS INC4× · 2020–2024 · $15k · revenue +426%
Funded once
- WRWE RIDE TOOone grant, 2022 · $6k
- ABAlta Bowl Horseowner's Associationone grant, 2017 · $3k
- MHMorgan Horse RanchPoint Reyes National Seashoreone grant, 2020 · $3k
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 Friends of Huddart and Wunderlich Parks is a group of park enthusiasts and stewards who provide a wide range of programs and events in two historic redwood parks in the heart of the Bay Area. We lead hikes, provide environmental…
Our mission is to be a resource for Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake county and surrounding areas to provide services for people needing to care for or re-home horses. We are dedicated to recycling displaced horses. We advise on options…
To bring strength and healing to children with special needs and the san francisco community through the love and care of horses; to encourage young people in compassion and leadership through volunteerism.
The purpose of the Santa Cruz County Horsemen's Association (SCCHA) is to promote interest in horses and horsemanship, and to bring people together to share this common interest. As a group, we aid and support activities concerning the…
Providing horse based therapy for handicapped and developmentally disabled adults and children.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Giant Steps Therapeutic Equestrian Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is Daily Acts Organization. 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 27 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 43 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 VOLUNTEERS FOR OUTDOOR CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Bay Area Ridge Trail Council ↗
- Who funds Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation ↗
- Who funds MARIN STABLES & TRAILS INC ↗
- Who funds HALLECK CREEK RANCH ↗
- Who funds SAN MATEO COUNTY PARKS AND RECREATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods ↗
- Who funds ACCESS ADVENTURE ↗
- Who funds CONCORD MT DIABLO TRAIL RIDE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ALMA EQUINE ↗
- Who funds TRI-VALLEY CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SQUARE PEG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Ocean Riders of Marin ↗
- Who funds Point Reyes National Seashore Association ↗
- Who funds Sonoma Ecology Center ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA RIDING CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds MARIN HORSE COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR EQUINE FACILITATED THERAPY ↗
- Who funds Pine Ridge Association ↗
- Who funds EQUI-ED INC ↗
- Who funds Giant Steps Therapeutic Equestrian Center Inc ↗
- Who funds CARING COWGIRL ↗
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 · Sonoma County Community Foundation · Clif Family Foundation · Bothin Foundation · McNabb Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Heck Foundation · Mary a Crocker Trust · Hobsonlucas Family Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund
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 Bay Area Barns and Trails 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Bay Area Barns and Trails?
Find your warmest path to Bay Area Barns and Trails 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.