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Bay Area Ridge Trail Council at a glanceMostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

Bay Area Ridge Trail Council

To plan, promote and sustain a connected 550-mile hiking, cycling and equestrian trail on the ridge lines above the San Francisco Bay - linking people, parks and open spaces for today and future generations.

$141k
Granted FY2025still arriving
2
Grants FY2025still arriving
1
States reached
$118k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its fieldRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2021 to 2025.

Recreation & Sports$225kEnvironment$57kArts & Culture$10k
02FY2025 · 2 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 2 grants below total $138,000, the rows itemized in this filing. The $141,050 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $3,050 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2025

  • $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $118k
$118,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$1.5M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
CA Dept of Parks & Recreation$118,000
Santa Clara Valley Open Space$20,000
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY21–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 94% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 8%Volunteers for Outdoor CA: $17k → 7%Santa Clara Valley Open Space: $20k → 8%Sonoma County Regional Parks: $20k → 9%Regional Parks Foundation: $25k → 10%San Francisco Recreation Park: $37k → 10%CA Dept of Parks & Recreation: $118k → 12%Santa Clara Valley Open Space: $20k → 8%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its field
04the grantee network

5 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 5 of the 8 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

1
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
5/5
Grantees still filing
1/5
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION CANDLESTICK POINT STATE RECR: $118,000 · OtherCALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION CANDLESTICK POINT STATE RECRCITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO: $37,000 · OtherCITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCOREDWOOD TRAILS ALLIANCE: $25,000 · OtherREDWOOD TRAILS ALLIANCEREGIONAL PARKS FOUNDATION: $25,000 · OtherREGIONAL PARKS FOUNDATIONNBC Universal Media LLC: $10,000 · OtherGREENBELT ALLIANCEPEOPLE FOR OPEN SPACE: $40,000 · EnvironmentGREENBELT ALLIA…Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation: $20,000 · Recreation & SportsSonoma County …VOLUNTEERS FOR OUTDOOR CALIFORNIA: $16,575 · Recreation & SportsVOLUNTEERS FOR…
Other$215,000Environment$40,000Recreation & Sports$36,575

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetGREENBELT ALLIANCEPEOPLE FOR OPEN SPACE: $40,000 over 2y, 0.7% of budgetREDWOOD TRAILS ALLIANCE: $25,000 over 1y, 3.0% of budgetREGIONAL PARKS FOUNDATION: $25,000 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetSonoma County Regional Parks Foundation: $20,000 over 1y, 1.7% of budgetVOLUNTEERS FOR OUTDOOR CALIFORNIA: $16,575 over 1y, 48% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

American Online Givin…Donor Advised Charita…Fidelity Investments …Amazonsmile Foundation
American Online Giving Foundation IncDE7.2× affinity5 shared granteesties to 3 of 3Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Bay Area Ridge Trail Council funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Bay Area Ridge Trail Council. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%3%13%28%50%funder's share of their income ↑0%4%8%11%15%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–15%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 8 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

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    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
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    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
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    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home