· Private foundation
Ellen Browning Scripps 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k33 grants · $675k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $410k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO | $110,000 |
| SCRIPPS GREEN HOSPITAL | $100,000 |
| SCRIPPS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL | $100,000 |
| MARITIME MUSEUM OF SAN DIEGO | $50,000 |
| SCRIPPS RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| HORSELESS CARRIAGE FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| SCRIPPS COLLEGE | $39,663 |
| ST VINCENT DE PAUL CENTER | $35,000 |
| RADY CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $34,809 |
| KNOX COLLEGE | $30,000 |
| SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY | $30,000 |
| THE ELIZABETH HOSPICE INC | $25,330 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF SAN DIEGO | $25,000 |
| FRANCIS PARKER SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| SCHUYLER COUNTY EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $23,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $228k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
46 repeat relationships — 39 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 2 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k 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 DIEGO6× · 2020–2025 · $660k · revenue +77%
- SCScripps College6× · 2020–2025 · $286k · revenue +64%
- HCHORSELESS CARRIAGE FOUNDATION INC6× · 2020–2025 · $240k · revenue +11% · 55% of their budget
Funded once
- RMRONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CAMPone grant, 2020 · $20k
- RMRONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIESone grant, 2020 · $20k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $15k
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.
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…
La Jolla Historical Society celebrates the history and culture of this region along the waters edge through interdisciplinary programs, exhibitions, and research that challenge expectations. It balances contemporary and historic…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
Acquire, manage and protect land in perpetuity that supports sensitive habitats and species, and to educate and inspire people and communities as stewards and advocates of their natural environment.
The mission of the san diego county bar association is to be the representative of the san diego county legal profession, serving the prblic and the profession by enhancing the legal system and promoting justice, professional excellence,…
The museum of contemporary art san diego invites all audiences to experience our world, our region, and ourselves through the prism of contemporary art.
To spark breakthrough community action that elevates every child and family toward a brighter future.
To support and further the research, education and community service objectives of san diego state university.
To connect all people with wildlife, inspire caring for nature, and advance conservation action.
To protect and steward in perpetuity the unique natural, cultural, and asthetic resources of the preserve and serve as a model of ecologically sustainable development to committees outside the preserve.
The museum of sonoma county engages and inspires our diverse community with art and history exhibitions, collections, and public programs that are inclusive, educational, and relevant.
The los angeles conservancy is a nonprofit membership organization that works through education and advocacy to recognize, preserve, and revitalize the historic architectural and cultural resources of los angeles county.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Diego Opera Association and the most unlike its peers is Schuyler County Architecture 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 54 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 57 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 Scripps College ↗
- Who funds HORSELESS CARRIAGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO HUMANE SOCIETY AND SPCA ↗
- Who funds KNOX COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BLOODWORKS ↗
- Who funds FRANCIS PARKER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds HELEN WOODWARD ANIMAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds LIBRARY ASSOCIATION OF LA JOLLA ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF SAN DIEGO INC ↗
- Who funds LA JOLLA WOMANS CLUB ↗
- Who funds THEATER & ARTS FOUNDATION OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY DBA LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE ↗
- Who funds Schuyler County Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds ELDERHELP OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds LA JOLLA COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE ELIZABETH HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds HOME START INC ↗
- Who funds FOREVER BALBOA PARK ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds RANCHO COASTAL HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WESTERN STATES TRAIL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL DISASTER SEARCH DOG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds San Diego Opera Association ↗
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 · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Samuel I & John Henry Fox Foundation · David C Copley Foundation · The Conrad Prebys Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · Dr Seuss Foundation · Pratt Memorial Fund · The Nordson Corporation Foundation · Heller Foundation of San Diego
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 Ellen Browning Scripps 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 Ellen Browning Scripps Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ellen Browning Scripps 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.