· Private foundation
Danford Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k14 grants · $54k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $276k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $119k
- $250k+2 grants · $973k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FLOATING DOCTORS | $515,000 |
| HANNIG ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH ORGAN | $457,500 |
| SAINT JUDE'S CHILDREN HOSPITAL | $118,500 |
| DOGCAMP BOQUETE FOUNDATION | $41,200 |
| SEQUIOIA AWARDS | $30,000 |
| SEQUOIA HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| SEQUOIA HOSPITAL KENNETT NURSING SC | $25,000 |
| SHERIFF'S ACTIVITY LEAGUE | $22,000 |
| HANNIG CUP | $20,000 |
| ONE LIFE COUNSELING CENTER | $15,000 |
| KAINOS HOME TRAINING CENTER | $12,500 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHAIRITIES BA | $10,000 |
| SEA SCOUT SHIP GRYPHON | $10,000 |
| DREAM VOLUNTEERS | $10,000 |
| THE BRAIN AND ANEURYSM FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–25, $514k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 6% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Danford Foundation’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, 90% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 76% — 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 +28% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
152 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2025, 126 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $41k 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
- HEHANNIG ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH ORGANIZATION HERO3× · 2023–2025 · $1.2M · revenue +156% · 100% of their budget
- FDFLOATING DOCTORS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $940k · revenue +130%
- SHSEQUOIA HOSPITAL FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $375k · revenue +322%
Funded once
- SHSequoia HospKennet Nursing Scholarsone grant, 2021 · $35k
- SFSant Francis Centerone grant, 2021 · $25k
- PIParkside Intermidiate Schoolone grant, 2017 · $23k
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.
Mission statement: mission: caring for our patients first and our people always. vision: to be the most comprehensive, integrated and connected health system for getting and staying well. values: excellence - we deliver high-quality,…
MISSION STATEMENT: MISSION: CARING FOR OUR PATIENTS FIRST AND OUR PEOPLE ALWAYS. VISION: TO BE THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE, INTEGRATED AND CONNECTED HEALTH SYSTEM FOR GETTING AND STAYING WELL. VALUES: EXCELLENCE - We deliver high-quality,…
MISSION STATEMENT: MISSION: CARING FOR OUR PATIENTS FIRST AND OUR PEOPLE ALWAYS. VISION: TO BE THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE, INTEGRATED AND CONNECTED HEALTH SYSTEM FOR GETTING AND STAYING WELL. VALUES: EXCELLENCE - We deliver high-quality,…
Marin humane transforms lives through exceptional animal care, humane education, and advocacy. every day, marin humane inspires compassion and positive relationships between people and animals.
The mission of children's hospital & research center at oakland is to protect and advance the health and well-being of children through clinical care, teaching and research.
The bar association of san francisco champions equal access to justice and promotes humanity, excellence, and diversity in the legal profession. we provide legal services to disadvantaged and underserved individuals in san francisco. we…
To support and assist caregivers of adults with chronic diseases and conditions through education, services, research and advocacy.
To provide life long professional services to support all people with hearing or communication challenges in achieving their goals.
To improve the health of our patients and community by providing high quality, cost-effective, culturally sensitive, patient-centered health care.
The San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory is dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats through science and outreach.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is One Life Counseling Center and the most unlike its peers is DogCamp Boquete 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 30 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 30% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
93 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 93 of the 263 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 HANNIG ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH ORGANIZATION HERO ↗
- Who funds FLOATING DOCTORS INC ↗
- Who funds SEQUOIA HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD CITY SEQUOIA AWARDS INC ↗
- Who funds California Inclusive Sailing ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds SAN MATEO COUNTY HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds SHANTI PROJECT ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA CONFLICT RESOLUTION CENTER ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN HOUSE ↗
- Who funds FOSTER CITY VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA YOUTH SAILING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DogCamp Boquete Foundation ↗
- Who funds Marine Science Institute ↗
- Who funds DREAM VOLUNTEERS ↗
- Who funds COPD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KIDS OUTDOOR SPORTS CAMP ↗
- Who funds INGRID B LACY MIDDLE SCHOOL PTO ↗
- Who funds ONE LIFE COUNSELING CENTER ↗
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: Atkinson Foundation · Peter Uccelli Foundation · Sutter Bay Hospitals · Bothin Foundation · Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation · Sand Hill Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Bohannon Foundation · Community Foundation of San Carlos · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard 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 Danford 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.
- The Shriners' Hospital for Children — 6% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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 Danford Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Danford 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.