· Community foundation
Community Foundation Santa Cruz County
To promote philanthropy to make santa cruz county a better place to live, now and in the future.we bring together people, ideas, and resources to inspire philanthropy and accomplish great things.
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.
The 303 grants below total $20,690,367 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $22,817,447 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $2,127,080 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k60 grants · $410k
- $10k–50k159 grants · $3.1M
- $50k–250k69 grants · $6.9M
- $250k+15 grants · $10M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC | $2,808,979 |
| LAND TRUST OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY | $1,260,876 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE OF MONTEREY | $1,063,000 |
| THE 418 PROJECT | $937,047 |
| PAJARO VALLEY HEALTHCARE DISTRICT PROJECT (DBA WATSONVILLE COMMUNITY HOSPIT | $554,500 |
| CAL POLY FOUNDATION | $505,000 |
| CABRILLO COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $457,993 |
| SANTA CRUZ SHAKESPEARE | $430,595 |
| UC SANTA CRUZ FOUNDATION | $400,000 |
| SANTA CRUZ COMMUNITY HEALTH | $367,673 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK SANTA CRUZ COUNTY | $351,306 |
| ELKHORN SLOUGH FOUNDATION | $316,955 |
| TAHOE TRUCKEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $308,000 |
| RICE UNIVERSITY | $260,000 |
| COUNTY PARK FRIENDS | $259,676 |
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, $8.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% 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.
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 11% of Community Foundation Santa Cruz County’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. Read by recipient address, 83% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 79% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +55% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
349 repeat relationships — 232 still active in FY2024, 117 since wound down; 51 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.3M 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
- LTLAND TRUST OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY8× · 2017–2024 · $4.8M · revenue ×12
SANTA CRUZ COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS8× · 2017–2024 · $3.0M · revenue +126%- CACommunity Action Board8× · 2017–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +231%
Funded once
- LOLIVE OAK SCHOOL DISTRICTone grant, 2020 · $1.2M
- IIINCOMM INCENTIVESone grant, 2023 · $1.0M
- PFPROACT FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2020 · $500k · revenue 0% · 88% of their budget
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 union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
California Coastkeeper Alliance unites Waterkeeper programs statewide to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
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…
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
California ocean science trust (ost) is a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating progress towards a healthy and productive ocean future for california. created by state legislation, ost bridges the gap between cutting-edge…
The Sierra Fund (TSF) is a non-profit organization with a mission to restore ecosystem and community resiliency in the Sierra Nevada.
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
The mission of the California Farmland Trust is to help farmers protect the best farmland in the world.
To serve our community by providing direct access to sustainable sources of fresh produce and other unique foods, and provide education about food issues, both local and beyond.
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
The San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory is dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats through science and outreach.
Create and publish educational materials, conduct professional development, promote awareness, and sponsor research on the spectacular biological diversity of the State of CA.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Bruce W Woolpert Algebra Academy. 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 33 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 9% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
569 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. 569 of the 687 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 Pajaro Valley Healthcare District Project ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LAND TRUST OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SANTA CRUZ COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTERS ↗
- Who funds Community Action Board ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds ENCOMPASS COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Amah Mutsun Land Trust ↗
- Who funds UC SANTA CRUZ FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Silicon Valley Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds Community Bridges ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Cabrillo College Foundation ↗
- Who funds TAHOE TRUCKEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DIENTES COMMUNITY DENTAL CARE ↗
- Who funds Elkhorn Slough Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE 418 PROJECT ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds TAHOE EXPEDITION ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR FARMWORKER FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEER CENTERS OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds HOUSING MATTERS ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF ART AND HISTORY AT THE MCPHERSON CENTER ↗
- Who funds VANGUARD CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds SENDEROS ↗
- Who funds ARTS COUNCIL SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SHAKESPEARE PLAY ON SANTA CRUZ SHAKESPEARE ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds DIGITAL NEST INC ↗
- Who funds PAJARO VALLEY PREVENTION AND STUDENT ASSISTANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes Inc ↗
- Who funds PAJARO VALLEY SHELTER SERVICES ↗
- Who funds SALUD PARA LA GENTE ↗
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: Monterey Peninsula Foundation · Volunteer Centers of Santa Cruz County · Pajaro Valley Community Health Trust · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · Sunlight Giving · Caroline's Nonprofit Thrift Shop · Community Foundation for San Benito County · Nancy Buck Ransom Foundation · Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation · Arts Council Santa Cruz County · The J Miles and Rosanne Reiter Family Foundation · Sutter Bay Hospitals
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 Community Foundation Santa Cruz County 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.
- Redlands Christian Migrant Association Inc — 51% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- The University of Tulsa — 5% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America Inc — 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.