· Private foundation
Cynthia and Merrill Magowan Family 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $52k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Addiction Education Society Inc | $52,250 |
| Mayo Clinic | $25,000 |
| The Marine Mammal Center | $10,000 |
| San Francisco Zoological Society | $10,000 |
| Deerfield Academy | $10,000 |
| Tunnel To Towers Foundation | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| Bakers Institute | $2,500 |
| Call Primerose | $2,500 |
| Peninsula Family Service | $2,500 |
| Fine Arts Museums Foundation | $2,500 |
| Hillsborough Beautification Foundat | $2,500 |
| Friends of Coos County Animals Inc | $1,875 |
| Naval Institute Foundation | $1,875 |
| World Central Kitchen Inc | $1,750 |
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 (FY17–25, $52k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 22% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
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 +56% since the first grant, against -10% for the ones you funded once.
52 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 37 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 FY2025, 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
- TMTHE MARINE MAMMAL CENTER5× · 2017–2025 · $87k · revenue +101%
- AEADDICTION EDUCATION SOCIETY INC3× · 2021–2025 · $57k · revenue +163%
- PFPENINSULA FAMILY SERVICE5× · 2021–2025 · $40k · revenue +61%
Funded once
- CSCATHEDRAL SCHOOL ALUMNI ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2022 · $20k
- HGHILLSBOROUGH GARDEN CLUBone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +15%
- JMJAMES MERRILL HOUSE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue 0%
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 San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory is dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats through science and outreach.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Our mission is to act to conserve threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, choosing solutions that are sustainable, based on sound science and take into account human needs.
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The academy is a renowned scientific and educational institution with a mission to regenerate the natural world through science, learning, and collaboration. based in san francisco's golden gate park, it is home to a world-class aquarium,…
The catalina island conservancy protects and stewards 88% of catalina island. more than 42,000 acres of wildlands, coves and coastal habitats. founded to preserve the island's natural resources, the conservancy advances a mission rooted in…
Balboa Park Conservancy (the Conservancy) was organized on November 3, 1923. The Conservancy is the City of San Diegos (the City) partner and advocated for the greater good of Balboa Park (the Park). The Conservancy collaborated with and…
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…
Guided by the principles of academic rigor and diversity, the international school of san francisco offers programs of study in french and english to prepare its graduates for a world in which the ability to think critically and to…
The aquarium of the pacific's mission is to instill a sense of wonder, respect, and stewardship for the pacific ocean, its inhabitants, and ecosystems.
At san francisco friends school, students learn in a community grounded in the quaker values of reflection, integrity, peaceful problem-solving and stewardship. our teachers challenge students with a dynamic curriculum that inspires…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Francisco Zoological Society and the most unlike its peers is Primrose Foundation. 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 38 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
52 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. 52 of the 90 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 MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds THE MARINE MAMMAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds ADDICTION EDUCATION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA FAMILY SERVICE ↗
- Who funds Special Operations - Finding Kids ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA OPEN SPACE TRUST ↗
- Who funds Pacific Research Institute For Public Policy ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL TROPICAL BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds HILLSBOROUGH BEAUTIFICATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Friends of Coos County Animals ↗
- Who funds UCSF FOUNDATION INVESTMENT COMPANY ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NAVAL INSTITUTE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds AIM HIGH ↗
- Who funds EARTHWATCH INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSBOROUGH GARDEN CLUB ↗
- Who funds JAMES MERRILL HOUSE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FINE ARTS MUSEUMS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF DEERFIELD ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds United Religions ↗
- Who funds CORPORATION OF THE FINE ARTS MUSEUMS ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
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: The San Francisco Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · Rupert H Johnson Jr Foundation Rupert H Johnson Jr Trustee · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Hoefer Family Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Ronald P and Susan E Lynch Foundation C/O Milton Kain · The Joseph W Welch Jr Foundation · Connie and Bob Lurie Foundation Inc · Los Altos Mountain View Community Foundation · American Endowment 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 Cynthia and Merrill Magowan 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.
- Music Mountain Incorporated — 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 Cynthia and Merrill Magowan Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Cynthia and Merrill Magowan 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.