· Public charity
Bay Area Legal Aid
Baylegal provides free civil legal services to low-income residents of san francisco bay area to address legal barriers to housing, healthcare, personal safety, financial independence and stability so to escape poverty.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k4 grants · $92k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $183k
- $250k+3 grants · $3.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LEGAL ASSISTANCE TO THE ELDERLY | $1,763,127 |
| THE JUSTICE & DIVERSITY CENTER - HAP | $1,374,917 |
| CENTRO LEGAL DE LA RAZA | $482,961 |
| LAW FOUNDATION OF SILICON VALLEY | $183,094 |
| LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF SAN MATEO COUNTY | $39,795 |
| WESTERN CENTER ON LAW & POVERTY | $21,665 |
| NATIONAL HEALTH LAW PROGRAM | $17,639 |
| LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO INC | $13,104 |
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 (FY18–23, $84k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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.
15 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 1 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $483k 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
- LALegal Assistance to the Elderly8× · 2017–2024 · $8.2M · revenue +555% · 49% of their budget
- LALegal Aid Society of San Mateo County8× · 2017–2024 · $314k · revenue +85%
Western Center on Law & Poverty Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $169k · revenue +55%
Funded once
- HAHOUSING AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS ADVOCATESgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $113k · revenue +270%
- CVCommunity Violence Solutionsgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $29k · revenue +101%
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.
To provide transformative legal services that enable diverse communities in East Palo Alto and beyond to achieve a secure and thriving future.
The mission is to end relationship and sexual violence by being a catalyst for caring communities and social justice. the vision is for all people to live full, free, expressive, and empowered lives in a safe, healthy, vibrant, and…
The California Center for Movement Legal Services (Movement Legal) provides legal services in the pursuit of improving the lives of California's traditionally underserved residents, carrying out legal work that fosters community led policy…
Legal Link removes legal barriers that prolong poverty by adding critically needed capacity to the legal ecosystem.
As one of the most enduring civil rights institutions on the West Coast, we work to dismantle systems of oppression and racism, and build an equitable and just society.
The mission of Mental Health Advocacy Services (MHAS) is to protect and advance the legal rights of low-income adults and children with mental health disabilities and empower them to assert those rights in order to maximize their autonomy,…
Sexual Violence Law Center (SVLC) is a nonprofit law firm that protects the safety, privacy, and civil rights of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Washington through holistic and trauma-informed practices rooted in race and…
As a public interest law firm, NLSLA changes lives and transforms communities. Through a combination of individual representation, high impact litigation, and public policy advocacy, NLSLA combats the immediate and long-lasting effects of…
The Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco is dedicated to combating the displacement crisis gripping our city by building the power of working-class tenants of color to take on the real estate industry and win housing justice for all.…
Casa is a refuge, providing protection and education for people caught in the cylces of domestic violence, sexual assault and child assault. Casa is a healing community where women and children can receive the nurturing and support…
HAC assists homeless and mentally ill clients in the long and difficult process of becoming eligible for SSI and MediCal benefits. HAC provides assistance with other public benefits that clients need in the interim to survive until their…
La Raza Centro Legal San Francisco provides high quality, highly trusted, free legal services to low-income or immigrant clients in the San Francisco Bay Area.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Justice and Diversity Center of the Bar Association of San Francisco and the most unlike its peers is Cora Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 18 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 Legal Assistance to the Elderly ↗
- Who funds CENTRO LEGAL DE LA RAZA ↗
- Who funds Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County ↗
- Who funds Law Foundation of Silicon Valley ↗
- Who funds Western Center on Law & Poverty Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL HEALTH LAW PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSING AND ECONOMIC RIGHTS ADVOCATES ↗
- Who funds CORA Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds Safe Alternatives To Violent Environments ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS FOR CHILDREN FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS ↗
- Who funds EDEN COUNCIL FOR HOPE AND OPPORTUNITY ↗
- Who funds Public Interest Law Project ↗
- Who funds Community Violence Solutions ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR LGBTQ RIGHTS FKA NATIONAL CENTER FOR LESBIAN RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds THE JUSTICE AND DIVERSITY CENTER OF THE BAR ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO ↗
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: The San Francisco Foundation · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · Sunlight Giving · California Access to Justice Commission · United Way of the Bay Area · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Munger Tolles & Olson Foundation · Pinpoint Foundation · The Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati Foundation · The Morrison & Foerster Foundation · Equal Justice Works · The Sobrato Family 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 Bay Area Legal Aid 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.