· Private foundation
Donald C and Elizabeth M Dickinson 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 77% of DONALD C AND ELIZABETH M DICKINSON FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k2 grants · $40k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $876k
- $250k+2 grants · $843k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL COWBOY MUSEUM | $510,000 |
| RADYS CHILDRENS HOSPITAL | $333,000 |
| SAN DIEGO ZOO | $100,000 |
| USD HAHN SCHOOL OF NURSING | $100,000 |
| TERI CENTER | $100,000 |
| KRAEMER ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| CUREBOUND | $75,000 |
| RANCHO SANTA FE FOUNDATION | $62,000 |
| ARCS FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| CATHEDRAL CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL | $53,730 |
| INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART | $50,000 |
| CRISTO REY SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| ASELTINE SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| MINGEI INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $158k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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 +28% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 19 since wound down; 3 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $215k 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
- ZSZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO3× · 2017–2019 · $750k · revenue +28%
- KEKRAEMER ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION INC9× · 2017–2025 · $600k · revenue +34%
- CTCYGNET THEATRE COMPANY2× · 2023–2024 · $500k · revenue +113%
Funded once
- NHNATIONAL HEALTHCAREone grant, 2022 · $350k
NCH HEALTHCARE SYSTEM INCone grant, 2018 · $100k · revenue -350%- PRPACIFIC RIDGE SCHOOLgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $50k · revenue +50%
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 diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
San diego french-american school offers an exceptional bilingual education within a vibrant international community, preparing students to become confident, responsible and engaged global citizens.
San Diego Jewish Academy empowers each student to learn for life, guided by Jewish values and rooted in strength of community.
San Diego Theatres, Inc. (SDTI) is a not-for-profit public benefit corporation established to manage and operate publicly owned performing arts theatres. SDTI was established in 2003 by the San Diego Convention Center Corporation (SDCCC),…
To support and further the research, education and community service objectives of san diego state university.
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 friends of the san diego public library enhances the san diego public library system so that it may fulfill its literary, educational, technological, community, and cultural purposes.
Mission: the mission of san diego opera is to deliver exceptional performances and exciting, accessible programs to diverse audiences, focusing on community partnerships, and the transformative and expressive power of the human voice. as…
To support the social, recreational, cultural and education programs and facilities, both on campus and in the community, and to advocate for student interests, provide leadership opportunities and participate in shared governance.
To spark breakthrough community action that elevates every child and family toward a brighter future.
to advance regional contemporary art and artists while fostering cultural equity through access to meaningful art experiences
The san diego municipal employees association (sdmea) is dedicated to being a strong and effective advocate for san diego city employees. sdmea is united to improve employees' standard of living and promote their fair treatment by…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Uc San Diego Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Kraemer Endowment Foundation Inc. 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 24 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 53 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 ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds KRAEMER ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CYGNET THEATRE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds BUILDING 178 PERFORMING ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds AUTISM TREE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds CUREBOUND ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL TROPICAL BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds REUBEN H FLEET SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds A BRIDGE FOR KIDS ↗
- Who funds UC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF MAN DBA MUSEUM OF US ↗
- Who funds NCH HEALTHCARE SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDRENS INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds ASELTINE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds RANCHO SANTA FE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC RIDGE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF SAN PASQUAL ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds JACOBS & CUSHMAN SAN DIEGO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds AMERICARES FOUNDATION 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 Diego Foundation · The Conrad Prebys Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · Samuel I & John Henry Fox Foundation · Pratt Memorial Fund · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · The Parker Foundation · The Nordson Corporation Foundation · Sempra Foundation · The Cushman Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe 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 Donald C and Elizabeth M Dickinson 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.
- Americares Foundation 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.
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How do I get to Donald C and Elizabeth M Dickinson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Donald C and Elizabeth M Dickinson 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.