How much does Betsy Gordon Foundation give?

Betsy Gordon Foundation reported 25 grants totaling $227,446 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 16 and 36 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does Betsy Gordon Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Civil Rights (17%), Science & Tech (15%), Health (13%).

Who are Betsy Gordon Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Grip Training Institute ($315k), California Institute of Integral Studies ($150k), Heffter Research Institute Inc ($135k).

Does Betsy Gordon Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 36% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Betsy Gordon Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as Betsy Gordon Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Marin Community Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, East Bay Community Foundation.

Where is Betsy Gordon Foundation based?

Betsy Gordon Foundation is based in AZ.

Betsy Gordon Foundation

Betsy Gordon Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Betsy Gordon Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$227k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$63k

Largest

01What it funds

0194% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Civil Rights$609kScience & Tech$534kHealth$471kCrime & Legal$352kEducation$226kInternational$154kYouth Development$152kPhilanthropy$140kOther$0

02FY2025 · 25 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k20 grants · $29k
$10k–50k2 grants · $20k
$50k–250k3 grants · $178k

$1,000

Median grant

States reached

$16k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF INTEGRAL STUDIES	$63,000
TIBETAN ASSOCIATION OF NO CALIFORNIA	$60,000
GRIP-TRAINING INSTITUTE	$54,951
INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH AND HEALING	$10,000
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN	$10,000
INTERNATIONAL INST FOR HUMANISTIC STUDIES	$5,000
THE SRAMANI INSTITUTE	$5,000
THRESHHOLD FOUNDATION	$2,495
CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL & RESEARCH CNTR FNDN DBA UCSF BENIOFF CHILDREN'S HOSPIT	$1,000
SPIRIT ROCK INSIGHT MEDITATION CENTER	$1,000
ST VINCENT DE PAUL CHARITIES	$1,000
LIVINGDYING PROJECT	$1,000
MORAVIAN ACADEMY	$1,000
CANAL ALLIANCE	$1,000
HEIFER INTERNATIONAL	$1,000

02The need

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:

Its human-services grants (FY17–25, $31k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 16% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

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.

Which US states its grants reach

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 grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

83%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$3.0M · 45 repeat orgs$624k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +43% since the first grant, against +13% for those funded once.

45 repeat relationships: 20 still active in FY2025, 25 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$3.0M

$611k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+43%

+13%

Still filing today

53%

49%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Arts & CultureEducationInternationalHuman ServicesHealthEnvironmentOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

GT
GRIP TRAINING INSTITUTE
6× · 2020–2025 · $315k · revenue +227%
LF
Lumina Foundation for Education Inc
3× · 2018–2020 · $97k · revenue +28%
BC
BREAST CANCER PREVENTION PARTNERS
7× · 2017–2025 · $76k · revenue +25%

Funded once

LH
LSU HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER
one grant, 2020 · $60k
CI
Cinnamongirl Inc
one grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue +1% · 25% of their budget
UP
UCLA PSYCHODELIC STUDIES INITIATIVE
one grant, 2022 · $50k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Deep Medicine Circle

The Deep Medicine Circle is a nonprofit organization dedicated to healing the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, story and learning. Starting from a place of correcting relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people,…

Health

Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant

We promote reciprocity in the psychedelic community, and support the protection of sacred plants and cultural traditions. We advance psychedelic justice through curating critical conversations and uplifting the voices of women, queer…

Education

The Breakthrough Institute

The Breakthrough Institute is a research center that identifies and promotes technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges.

Environment

California Institute of Contemporary Art

—

Sonoma Mountain Institute

Environment

Braided Wisdom Inc

Empowering diverse communities by fostering transformational change through integrating indigenous wisdom teachings and cross-cultural mindfulness practices.

Human Services

The Oakland Institute

The Oakland Institute, an independent policy think tank, works to support global struggles for Indigenous rights, human rights, and land rights and to promote public participation and fair debate on critical social, economic, and…

Food & Nutrition

Commonweal

Engage in educational, charitable and research activities which contribute to the health of individuals, to public health and to the health of the global environment.

Human Services

Bay Nature Institute dba Bay Nature Bay Nature Magazine

Bay Nature connects the people of the San Francisco Bay Area to our natural world and motivates people to solve problems with nature in mind. Our vision is that all people have a close relationship with theirnatural world.

Environment

California Institute for Biodiversity

Create and publish educational materials, conduct professional development, promote awareness, and sponsor research on the spectacular biological diversity of the State of CA.

Education

Resource Renewal Institute

The resource renewal institute facilitates the creation, development and implementation of practical strategies to solve the entire complex environmental problem by addressing it comprehensively.

Environment

One Earth Philanthropy

One Earth's mission is to empower everyone, everywhere, with the knowledge, inspiration, and opportunity to heal the Earth and reclaim our future.

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Winnarainbow Inc Dba Camp Winnarainbow; the most unlike its peers is Narada Michael Walden Foundation. 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

67 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

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 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 67 of the 127 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.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

64/67

Grantees still filing

47/67

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$2,506,038Crime & Legal$346,951International$233,176Education$168,602Arts & Culture$119,150Health$112,025Philanthropy$96,500

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

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.

Marin Community FoundationCA25.2× affinity13 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Marin Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · East Bay Community Foundation · McNabb Foundation · The Fred Gellert Family Foundation · Tides Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Rsf Social Finance Inc · The Morris Stulsaft Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Furthur 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 Betsy Gordon Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Betsy Gordon Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

3get no government money at all

16report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–25%

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Betsy Gordon Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Betsy Gordon Foundation 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.

Play a game based on Betsy Gordon’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$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