How much does Ceres Charitable Foundation give?

Ceres Charitable Foundation reported 15 grants totaling $134,500 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 19 and 35 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does Ceres Charitable Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are International (26%), Environment (22%), Arts & Culture (13%).

Who are Ceres Charitable Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Medecins Sans Frontieres USA Inc ($190k), Montalvo Association ($109k), The Global Uplift Project ($57k).

Does Ceres Charitable Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 11% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Ceres Charitable Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as Ceres Charitable Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Where is Ceres Charitable Foundation based?

Ceres Charitable Foundation is based in OR.

Ceres Charitable Foundation

Ceres Charitable Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Ceres Charitable Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$135k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$40k

Largest

01What it funds

0198% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2024.

International$248kEnvironment$209kArts & Culture$127kEducation$66kHuman Services$50kScience & Tech$46kHealth$42kFood & Nutrition$39kOther$0

02FY2025 · 15 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k9 grants · $35k
$10k–50k6 grants · $100k

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$2.9M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Doctors Without Borders	$40,000
Montalvo Arts Center	$20,000
Union of Concerned Scientist	$10,000
The Global Uplift Project fka ODFL	$10,000
Fistula Foundation	$10,000
International Rescue Committee	$10,000
UNICEF	$5,000
Make-A-Wish Foundation	$5,000
Clean Air Task Force	$5,000
Wells Mountain Initiative	$5,000
American Indian College Fund	$5,000
Los Gatos Museum	$3,000
Bay Area Dragons Wrestling Center	$3,000
Hillbrook School	$2,500
KQED Inc	$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 (FY17–24, $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. 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.

Where the work is directed

The same grants placed two ways: where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose sends the money.

About 92% of Ceres Charitable Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address.

Ceres Charitable Foundationlessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address

How this is measured

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 funder’s own 990 grant descriptions.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

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

93%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$1.0M · 41 repeat orgs$74k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +74% since the first grant, against +16% for those funded once.

41 repeat relationships: 13 still active in FY2025, 28 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$1.0M

$64k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+74%

+16%

Still filing today

80%

55%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EnvironmentInternationalEducationHuman ServicesArts & CultureCrime & LegalOther

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

MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC
9× · 2017–2025 · $190k · revenue +98%
MA
MONTALVO ASSOCIATION
5× · 2021–2025 · $109k · revenue +18%
TG
The Global Uplift Project
7× · 2019–2025 · $57k · revenue +308%

Funded once

PRO PUBLICA INC
one grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue +16%
KC
Kiwanis Club of Palo Alto Charitabl
one grant, 2017 · $9k
LC
Life Child Africa Foundation
one grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue -11%

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.

Conservation International Foundation

Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.

Environment

World Wildlife Fund Inc

Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)

Environment

World Resources Institute

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…

International

Rainforest Foundation Inc

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.

Environment

Friends of the Earth

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…

Environment

One Earth Philanthropy

One Earth connects thinkers, doers, activists, and knowledge holders from around the world to solve humanity's greatest ecological challenges--together. Our belief is simple: The solutions to the climate crisis already exist. By connecting…

Environment

Third Way

To research and develop centrist policy ideas.

Civil Rights

Climateworks Foundation

Climateworks foundation's mission is to connect philanthropy, grantees, and strategic partners to build and deliver high-impact climate solutions that benefit all people.

Science & Tech

Ocean Conservancy

Ocean conservancy unites science, people, and policy to protect our ocean, today and for generations to come.

Environment

Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Foundation

To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.

Animals

Natural Resources Defense Council Inc

We safeguard the earth: its people, its plants and animals, and (see schedule o) the natural systems on which all life depends. we work to restore the integrity of the elements that sustain life - air, land, and water - to defend…

Environment

Chile-California Council

The Chile-California Council is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to developing and promoting joint endeavors and cooperative relations between Chile and California, as well as individuals, legal entities and other institutions in…

International

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated; 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.

05the grantee network

52 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

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 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 52 of the 74 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)

52/52

Grantees still filing

43/52

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

International$379,886Other$301,658Environment$146,223Arts & Culture$124,100Education$44,963Crime & Legal$43,000Health$35,586

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.

Silicon Valley Community FoundationCA19× affinity10 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

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 Ceres Charitable Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Ceres Charitable Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

3get no government money at all

7report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–40%

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.

Play a game based on Ceres’ 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