· Private foundation
Cleo 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Ventana Wilderness Alliance | $30,000 |
| Ct Apptd Spec Advocates of MonTEREY | $25,000 |
| Community Partnership for Youth | $20,000 |
| ANDERSON VALLEY EDUCATION FNDN | $15,000 |
| Epicenter of Monterey | $15,000 |
| Palenke Arts | $15,000 |
| Olinga Learning | $15,000 |
| O'Neill Sea Odyssey | $13,500 |
| BIG SUR LAND TRUST | $10,000 |
| JACOBS HEART CHILDRENS CANCER SUPPO | $10,000 |
| COASTAL KIDS HOME CARE | $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 (FY18–24, $100k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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 +68% since the first grant, against +58% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- VWVENTANA WILDERNESS ALLIANCE7× · 2018–2024 · $145k · revenue +30%
- CPCOMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP FOR YOUTH7× · 2018–2024 · $135k · revenue +30%
- TETHE EPICENTER OF MONTEREY7× · 2018–2024 · $91k · revenue +81%
Funded once
- CFCommunity Foundation for Monterey Cone grant, 2020 · $25k
- FCFUTURE CITIZENS FOUNDATION DBA THE FIRST TEE OF MONTEREY COUNTYgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $21k · revenue +83%
- MHMONTAGE HEALTH FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $20k · revenue +58%
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.
California Coastkeeper Alliance unites Waterkeeper programs statewide to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
CAUSE's mission is to build grassroots power to realize social, economic and environmental justice for the people of the Central Coast Region through policy research, leadership development, organizing and advocacy.
To conserve lands for recreational, educational, ecological, agricultural, scenic & open space opportunities. We develop & maintain public access ways & trails to the ocean, rivers & other natural or scenic features along coastal Mendocino…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
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…
To ensure the right of the public to access and respectfully enjoy the California Coast. To work for the completion of the California Coastal Trail and to educate the public about the coast and ocean resources.
To improve the economic health and quality of life in the monterey bay region.
To develop youth and conserve natural resources for a resilient, sustainable, and equitable community.
The mission of the California Farmland Trust is to help farmers protect the best farmland in the world.
To inspire all girls to be strong, smart, and bold and to respect themselves and the world around them.Girls Incorporated of the Central Coast offers a constellation of programs that deliver innovative, multi-faceted activities designed to…
To educate california youth about the operations of local, state, and federal government.
Coastal Quest (the Organization) is a nonprofit organization working collaboratively with partners to build resilient coastal communities in California. Our Mission is to accelerate solutions, building resilient coastal communities for…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Foundation of Mendocino County and the most unlike its peers is Palenke Arts. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 29 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 34 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 VENTANA WILDERNESS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP FOR YOUTH ↗
- Who funds THE EPICENTER OF MONTEREY ↗
- Who funds Anderson Valley Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds Big Sur Land Trust ↗
- Who funds COASTAL KIDS HOME CARE ↗
- Who funds RANCHO CIELO INC ↗
- Who funds OLINGA LEARNING ↗
- Who funds Palenke Arts ↗
- Who funds George Mark Childrens Fund ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF UKIAH ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MENDOCINO COUNTY ↗
- Who funds DIGITAL NEST INC ↗
- Who funds ONeill Sea Odyssey ↗
- Who funds MENDOCINO WOODLANDS CAMP ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FUTURE CITIZENS FOUNDATION DBA THE FIRST TEE OF MONTEREY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds MONTAGE HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEARTH ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COMMUNITY ADVOCACY ↗
- Who funds Action Council of Monterey County Inc ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS FOR PEACE ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF UKIAH INC ↗
- Who funds CHRONICLE SEASON OF SHARING FUND ↗
- Who funds CHARTWELL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CANDID ↗
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: Nancy Buck Ransom Foundation · Monterey Peninsula Foundation · Pebble Beach Company Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · The Joseph and Vera Long Foundation · Community Foundation Santa Cruz County · East Bay Community Foundation · Barnet Segal Charitable Trust · The James Irvine Foundation · George and Ruth Bradford Foundation · Latino Community Foundation · Silicon Valley Community 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 Cleo 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.