· Private foundation
Birches 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.
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.
The 35 grants below total $95,051 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $105,401 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $10,350 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k33 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $42k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Piedmont Education Endowment Foundation | $26,700 |
| Alameda Co. Community Food Bank | $15,000 |
| The Center | $5,000 |
| National Woman's Law Center | $5,000 |
| The Oakland Public Education Fund | $5,000 |
| Oakland Boys and Girls Club | $5,000 |
| World Central Kitchen | $4,000 |
| Piedmont Unified School | $3,021 |
| The Wilderness Society | $3,000 |
| Planned Parenthood Foundation of America | $2,000 |
| Brown Girls Do Ballet | $2,000 |
| African Community Center | $2,000 |
| Union of Concerned Scientists | $2,000 |
| The Trevor Project | $2,000 |
| Facing History and Ourselves | $2,000 |
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 (FY21–21, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 67% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Birches Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +24% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 12 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $16k 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
ALAMEDA HEALTH SYSTEM FOUNDATION2× · 2021–2022 · $18k · revenue +219%
PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC5× · 2019–2024 · $14k · revenue +43%- THTHOMAS HOUSE TEMPORARY SHELTER3× · 2021–2023 · $7k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- KSKellogg School of Managementone grant, 2019 · $25k
- SOSAVE OUR YOUTH SOYgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +41%
- ACALAMEDA CO COMMUNITY FOOD BANKone grant, 2021 · $16k
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 union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
To lead, serve and collaborate to mobilize enduring philanthropy for a better arizona.
Develops legal and technical infrastructure for digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Orange County Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Secure Justice. 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 35 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
74 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. 74 of the 148 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 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SAVE OUR YOUTH SOY ↗
- Who funds THE OAKLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds ALAMEDA HEALTH SYSTEM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds THOMAS HOUSE TEMPORARY SHELTER ↗
- Who funds Family Paths Inc ↗
- Who funds FACING HISTORY & OURSELVES INC ↗
- Who funds San Juan Citizens Alliance ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ↗
- Who funds PROJECT WORTHMORE ↗
- Who funds FOUNTAIN VALLEY SCHOOL OF COLORADO ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEWS LITERACY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds CULTURAL HERITAGE IMAGING ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD ↗
- Who funds INSIDE OUT YOUTH SERVICES ↗
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: Colorado Gives Foundation · Orange County Community Foundation · The Denver Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · Amg Charitable Gift Foundation · The William Jeff and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation · Farmers & Merchants Bank Foundation · Caring for Colorado Foundation · The Colorado Trust · Western Union Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Mile High United Way Inc
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 Birches 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.
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.