· Private foundation
Bob a Ross Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $421k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY | $45,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION | $45,000 |
| LARKIN STREET YOUTH SERVICES | $40,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO OPERA | $30,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO GAY MENS CHORUS | $25,000 |
| SANTA FE OPERA | $25,000 |
| GLBT HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $25,000 |
| LENSIC PERFORMING ARTS CENTER | $20,000 |
| OASIS ARTS | $17,641 |
| NEW CONSERVATORY THEATRE CENTER | $15,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO PRIDE | $11,600 |
| SAN FRANCISCO HOST COMMITTEE | $11,500 |
| OPERA PARALLELE | $10,376 |
| GIANTS COMMUNITY FUND | $10,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO OPERA GUILD | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $235k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
36 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 8 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $84k 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
- OOpenhouse8× · 2017–2024 · $906k · revenue +122%
- SFSAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION8× · 2017–2024 · $473k · revenue +37%
- LSLarkin Street Youth Services7× · 2017–2024 · $215k · revenue +90%
Funded once
- ALAIDS LEGAL REFERAL PANELone grant, 2017 · $15k
- SFSAN FRANCISCO-PARIS SISTER CITY COMMITTEE INCone grant, 2022 · $13k · revenue -100% · 83% of their budget
- SFSAN FRANCISCO CONSERVATORY OF MUSICone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue -54%
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.
SFP presents internationally acclaimed and emerging performing artists, introduces innovative programs, and builds new and diversified audiences for the arts through education and outreach activities.
Educate chorus members and perform concerts
Choral Music Performances: California Bach Society is a 30-voice chamber choir known for finely wrought interpretations of Renaissance and Baroque music, often accompanied by leading period instrumentalists. Each season, the choir performs…
Community Music / Arts Organization
Sfbatco unites artists and audiences through live theatre that is reflective of the authentic perspectives and history of the san francisco bay area.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Francisco Symphony and the most unlike its peers is Spectrum Institute. 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 39 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 60 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 Openhouse ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Larkin Street Youth Services ↗
- Who funds SHANTI PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO CHANTICLEER INC ↗
- Who funds New Conservatory Theatre Center ↗
- Who funds GIANTS COMMUNITY FUND ↗
- Who funds LENSIC PERFORMING ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO SPECIAL EVENTS COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds Theatre Rhinoceros Inc ↗
- Who funds Frameline Inc ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO HOST COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds SF Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Pride Celebration Cmte ↗
- Who funds Horizons Foundation ↗
- Who funds PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA & CHORALE ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds PRC ↗
- Who funds TENDERLOIN TESSIE HOLIDAY DINNERS ↗
- Who funds OASIS ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds Opera Parallle ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO OPERA GUILD AT THE WAR MEMORIAL OPERA HOUSE ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO-PARIS SISTER CITY COMMITTEE INC ↗
- Who funds MANDY'S SPECIAL FARM ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN 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 · Horizons Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Marin Community Foundation · The Hb and Lucille Horn Foundation · Koret Foundation · The James Irvine Foundation · McNabb Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Bernard Osher Foundation · Phyllis C Wattis 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 Bob a Ross Foundation Inc 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Bob a Ross Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Bob a Ross Foundation Inc 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.