· Private foundation
Chispa 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $6k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $25k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara | $75,000 |
| REACH | $25,000 |
| Story Teller Childrens Center | $6,000 |
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 (FY19–23, $60k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +34% since the first grant, against +34% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 1 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- NSNICHOLS SCHOOL OF BUFFALO3× · 2020–2022 · $4.0M · revenue +34%
- CECOMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL3× · 2019–2022 · $260k · revenue +93%
- SFSCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF SANTA BARBARA4× · 2018–2024 · $240k · revenue +143%
Funded once
- SFScholarship Foundation of SBone grant, 2019 · $120k
- VMVISIONS MADE VIABLEgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $60k · revenue +33%
DIRECT RELIEFgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $50k · revenue +67%
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.
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
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…
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
One Earth's mission is to empower everyone, everywhere, with the knowledge, inspiration, and opportunity to heal the Earth and reclaim our future.
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;…
The resource renewal institute facilitates the creation, development and implementation of practical strategies to solve the entire complex environmental problem by addressing it comprehensively.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Create and publish educational materials, conduct professional development, promote awareness, and sponsor research on the spectacular biological diversity of the State of CA.
To advocate for policy changes by governments and corporations in order to preserve ocean life and return the oceans to their former abundance.
The 5 Gyres Institute (5 Gyres) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles, with a global network of supporters united in the pursuit of a planet free of plastic pollution. 5 Gyres' mission is to empower action against the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Santa Barbara Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation. 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 40 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 10% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 43 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 NICHOLS SCHOOL OF BUFFALO ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds VISIONS MADE VIABLE ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds FEEDMORE WNY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA CHANNELKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds STORYTELLER CHILDRENS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds PATH ↗
- Who funds HEAL THE OCEAN INC ↗
- Who funds Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds SHELTERBOX USA INC ↗
- Who funds WORLDWOMENWORK ↗
- Who funds OCEAN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds 350ORG ↗
- Who funds TRANSITION HOUSE ↗
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: Santa Barbara Foundation · Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · The John C Mithun Foundation · The Osherenko-Young Foundation · Brittingham Family Foundation · June G Outhwaite Charitable Trust JS Poucher KL Englert & CM Cooney Co-Tr · The Steele Family Foundation · Dancing Tides Foundation Inc · Patricia Bragg Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · The Turpin-Allebrand Family Charitable Foundation · The B & B 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 Chispa 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.
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Chispa Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Chispa 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.