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· Public charity
Berkeley Film Foundation
BFF provides grants to filmmakers who live or work in the East Shore cities of the Bay Area for a film project about an important social issue.
$266k
Granted FY2020
5
Grants
2
Communities
$70k
Largest
01What you fund
01
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 50% of BERKELEY FILM FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.
02FY2020 · 5 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2020
- Under $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $49k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $70k
$12,000
Median grant
2
States reached
$724k
Total assets
Largest grants
- Independent Documentary$70,000
- Kilgust & Cohen LLC$25,000
- Swell Cinema$12,000
- Freedom Bound Center$12,000
- International Documentary$7,500
02The need
03
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.
show:
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–20) land where the poverty rate runs at 12% — the area typically sits at 11%. 39% of your dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
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; 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your field
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.
1
Film Independent
To support independent filmmakers and to promote independent filmmaking to the public.
Arts & Culture
2
Independent Film Alliance
—
3
The Filmmaker Fund
Philanthropy
4
Santa Barbara International Film
Sbiff's mission is to engage, enrich, and inspire people through the power of film. sbiff celebrates the art of cinema and provides impactful educational experiences for their local, national, and global communities.
Arts & Culture
5
Center for Contemporary Documentation Inc
Philanthropy
6
San Francisco Independent Film Festival
SF IndieFest presents important independent narrative, documentary, and short films from around the world.
Arts & Culture
7
Social Justice Film Institute
The mission of the Social Justice Film Institute is to encourage the appreciation of visual storytelling as a tool to social justice issues. Our primary program is the Social Justice Film Festival, a premier film festival in the U.S.…
Arts & Culture
8
Independent Arts & Media
Independent Arts & Media's mission is to steward and empower independent arts and media projects that foster community and civic participation, and facilitate cultural engagement and free expression.
Arts & Culture
9
Dc Dox
Dc dox is a major international film festival in the nation's capital dedicated to promoting documentary film as a leading art form, championing new voices and innovations in non-fiction storytelling, and using film as a catalyst to engage…
—
10
Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival
Bringing community together through films that show the jewish culture and traditions.
Arts & Culture
11
Baltimore Filmmakers Collective Inc
Arts & Culture
12
Northwest Film Forum
Northwest Film Forum incites public dialogue and creative action through collective cinematic experiences. A nonprofit film and arts center located in Seattle, Northwest Film Forum presents hundreds of films, festivals, community events,…
Arts & Culture
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Center for Independent Documentary and the most unlike its peers is International Documentary Foundation Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
04the grantee network
8 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2024.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/8
Grantees still filing
6/8
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Other$125,500Arts & Culture$113,500Community Improvement$12,000
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.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organisation Berkeley Film 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.
2024
’20’21’22’23’24
- The Center for Independent Documentary — 6% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
typical government reliance, FY20–24
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. 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.
04Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: Independent Documentary.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
low risk
~10 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 8 filed years.
Track record & reputation
low risk
8 years of Form 990 filings, still active; revenue up 5.0× since.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 042738458 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on Independent Documentary, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- On trackFinancial stability— Roughly 10 months of cash on hand.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue grew over the period.
- On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 1% of their budget — diversified.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Berkeley Film Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Berkeley Film Foundation through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines