· Private foundation
Ceres Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k13 grants · $44k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $87k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Montalvo Arts Center | $31,500 |
| Doctors Without Borders | $15,000 |
| The Global Uplift Project fka ODFL | $10,000 |
| ProPublica | $10,000 |
| Fistula Foundation | $10,000 |
| Second Harvest Food Bank | $10,000 |
| Union of Concerned Scientist | $5,450 |
| Earthjustice | $5,163 |
| Make-A-Wish Foundation | $5,000 |
| American Indian College Fund | $5,000 |
| Save the Redwoods League | $3,000 |
| Trust For Public Land | $3,000 |
| Southern Poverty Law Center | $3,000 |
| Los Gatos Museum | $3,000 |
| Center for Disaster Philanthropy | $3,000 |
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, $29k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 31% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 92% of Ceres Charitable 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 +74% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 23 since wound down; 2 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13k 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
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC8× · 2017–2024 · $150k · revenue +98%- MAMONTALVO ASSOCIATION4× · 2021–2024 · $89k · revenue +10%
- TGThe Global Uplift Project6× · 2019–2024 · $47k · revenue +308%
Funded once
- KCKiwanis Club of Palo Alto Charitablone grant, 2017 · $9k
- CACLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INCone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue +8%
- SFSUNSHINE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue +14%
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.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The purpose of rainforest foundation us is to support indigenous peoples and forest communities in their efforts to secure their lands, protect their environment, and uphold their rights.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
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;…
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Cdp north america, inc. 's ("cdp-na") vision for the future is a thriving economy that works for people and planet in the long term. we focus investors and companies on taking urgent action to build a truly sustainable economy by measuring…
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated and the most unlike its peers is Rising International. 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 37 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
50 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. 50 of the 72 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 MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds MONTALVO ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds The Global Uplift Project ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY STUDY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Fistula Foundation ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA DRAGONS WRESTLING CENTER ↗
- Who funds NEXT DOOR SOLUTIONS TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds LOS GATOS EDUCATION FOUNDATION DBA ONE COMMUNITY LG ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INDIAN COLLEGE FUND ↗
- Who funds Rocky Mountain Institute ↗
- Who funds HILLBROOK SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Climate Mobilization Project Inc ↗
- Who funds VIOLENCE POLICY CENTER ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN WILDLIFE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RISE AGAINST HUNGER INC ↗
- Who funds VIETNAM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds 350ORG ↗
- Who funds PRO PUBLICA INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE EMERGENCY FUND ↗
- Who funds RAINFOREST TRUST ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds SUNSHINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Life Child Africa Foundation ↗
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: Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · Bright Funds Foundation · The Valley Foundation · Ranae Desantis Foundation · The Sobrato Family Foundation · Heffernan Group Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · United Way Worldwide · American Endowment 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 Ceres Charitable 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.