· Private foundation
Cestra Butner Family Foundation
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
- $10k–50k8 grants · $175k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $600k
- $250k+2 grants · $625k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHILDREN'S FAIRYLAND | $375,000 |
| PEACE CORPS FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| OAKLAND SYMPHONY | $175,000 |
| OK PROGRAM OF OAKLAND | $125,000 |
| HIDDEN GENIUS PROJECT | $125,000 |
| OAKLAND ZOO | $125,000 |
| ORAL LEE BROWN FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| 100 BLACK MEN OF AMERICA INC | $25,000 |
| ALS THERAPY DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE | $25,000 |
| KIDS FOR THE BAY | $25,000 |
| BOULE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| ALPHA GAMMA BOULE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| LEND A HAND FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| THE ROTARY FOUNDATION OF ROTARY INTERNATIONAL | $15,000 |
| OAKLAND ROTARY ENDOWMENT | $15,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $80k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +23% since the first grant, against -27% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 4 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, 80% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $275k 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
- HGHIDDEN GENIUS PROJECT4× · 2021–2024 · $1.9M · revenue +61%
- OPOAKLAND PROMISE4× · 2017–2022 · $820k · revenue +185%
- OPOK PPROGRAM OF OAKLAND5× · 2020–2024 · $510k · revenue ×15 · 25% of their budget
Funded once
- TOTHE OAKLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION FUNDone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue -27%
- FOFRIENDS OF THE OAKLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS LIBRARIESone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue -73%
- OPOK PROGRAM INCone grant, 2017 · $15k
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 specific purposes of this corporation are to provide educational services and support to the student population in oakland as determined by the corporation t0 be appropriate. additionally, the corporation may engage in any activities…
The mission of Oakland Kids First is to increase youth voice, leadership and power to create engaging and equitable public schools where all students learn and lead.
The oakland chamber of commerce foundation carries out charitble work to benefit the greater oakland community.
Provide high impact grants to non profits serving oakland county.
The Mission of the Oakland Community College Foundation is to obtain financial support to advance the mission and goals of Oakland Community College
The Oakland Fund reaches across the city, engaging private partners to innovate, test and scale ideas that enhance Oakland. The Fund strives to improve the prosperity, safety and quality of life for all Oaklanders with projects that: build…
At college prep we believe in the foundational importance of scholarship, the value of dialogue, and the need for academically curious young people to belong to a kind, creative, diverse and joyful community. we challenge our students to…
To establish and maintain a positive school culture in which all students are motivated to learn, support each other, and have structures in place that assist students in accessing their full artistic and academic potential.
To advance arts justice by ensuring that all students in under-resourced oakland public schools receive a comprehensive arts education in order to improve learning and promote achievement.
To prepare its students for admission to and success in college and career,and to become happy and productive members of society.
Oakland Leaf spurs creative and educational growth for Oakland youth by providing programs that cultivate critical thinking skills, emphasize socioemotional learning opportunities, and support authentic leadership development. They…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Oakland Public Education Fund and the most unlike its peers is Oral Lee Brown Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
20 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. 20 of the 26 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 HIDDEN GENIUS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND PROMISE ↗
- Who funds Oakland Childrens Fairyland Inc ↗
- Who funds EAST BAY PERFORMING ARTS dba OAKLAND SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds OK PPROGRAM OF OAKLAND ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION SOCIETY OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds THE OAKLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Peace Corps Foundation ↗
- Who funds EAST BAY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF OAKLAND ↗
- Who funds 100 BLACK MEN OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds ORAL LEE BROWN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BOULE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEND A HAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ROTARY FOUNDATION OF ROTARY INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND ROTARY ENDOWMENT ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE OAKLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS LIBRARIES ↗
- Who funds ALS THERAPY DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NCGA 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: East Bay Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Quest Foundation · The PG&E Corporation Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Impactassetsinc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Cestra Butner Family 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.
- Als Therapy Development Foundation Inc — 8% of income from government
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.
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Find your warmest path to Cestra Butner Family 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.