· Private foundation
Downing 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 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 $10k3 grants · $16k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $80k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAN DIEGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM | $80,000 |
| DOWNING FAMILY OPERATING FOUNDATION | $6,000 |
| SAN DIEGO ASTRONOMY ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 1% of your 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.
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 +48% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 7 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
- SDSAN DIEGO SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY8× · 2017–2025 · $520k · revenue +48%
- ENEmilio Nares Foundation6× · 2017–2022 · $185k · revenue +65%
- SDSAN DIEGO YACHT CLUB SAILING FOUNDATION4× · 2020–2023 · $35k · revenue +525% · 30% of their budget
Funded once
- BPBALBOA PARK CULTURAL PARTNERSHIPone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue -4%
- PCPACIFIC COAST SAILING FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +2%
- FBFOREVER BALBOA PARKgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +191%
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 Maritime Museum of San Diego restores, maintains and operates historic vessels.The museum has one of the world's finest collections of historic ships, including the world's oldest active ship Star of India.
To promote stamp collecting
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…
The goal of the Southwestern Junior Foundation is to extend sailing and angler experiences to the youth of San Diego County who are in need of financial assistance.
To elevate the quality of life in our urban communities through improvements, services, and activations in downtown's parks and open spaces.
The Museum functions as an educational and cultural institutionexercising community responsibility for the preservation of the automotive arts and sciences
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Uc San Diego Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Downing Family Operating Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 21 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 SAN DIEGO SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds DOWNING FAMILY OPERATING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Emilio Nares Foundation ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO YACHT CLUB SAILING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PADRES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CORTEZ RACING ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BALBOA PARK CULTURAL PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO ASTRONOMY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC COAST SAILING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOREVER BALBOA PARK ↗
- Who funds St Helena Hospital Foundation ↗
- Who funds REUBEN H FLEET SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds UC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PATRONS OF THE PRADO ↗
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 · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · Sempra Foundation · The Conrad Prebys Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Downing Family Operating Foundation · Jw Sefton Foundation · Heller Foundation of San Diego · The Thomas C Ackerman Foundation · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · David C Copley 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 Downing 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.
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 Downing Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Downing 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.