· Private foundation
Ellis 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 $10k14 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $61k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BALBOA PARK CONSERVANCY | $30,000 |
| TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY | $21,400 |
| VOICES FOR CHILDREN | $10,000 |
| REGIONAL TASK FORCE ON THE HOMELESS | $5,000 |
| CHRISTOPHER NEWPORT UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| PROJECT RESTORE HOPE | $5,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL - PHILADELPHIA | $2,500 |
| JACOB SLANIA MEMORIAL FUND | $2,500 |
| VOICE OF SAN DIEGO | $2,500 |
| RADY'S CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF SD | $2,500 |
| SAN DIEGO GRANTMAKERS | $2,000 |
| CAL MATTERS | $1,500 |
| URBAN DISCOVERIES MINISTRIES | $1,000 |
| NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE ASSOCIATION | $1,000 |
| MOVEMBER - SAM ATTISHA | $500 |
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, $64k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 62% 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.
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 16% of Ellis Family 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.
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 +44% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 12 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- VFVOICES FOR CHILDREN9× · 2017–2025 · $115k · revenue +44%
- TCTEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY5× · 2021–2025 · $87k · revenue +31%
- RTREGIONAL TASK FORCE ON THE HOMELESS6× · 2020–2025 · $37k · revenue +145%
Funded once
- MIMed4OurWorld Incgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue +123%
- TSTHE SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2023 · $3k · revenue -45%
- LALUX ART INSTITUTEone grant, 2017 · $2k · revenue -6%
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.
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 Federation brings together representatives of affordable housing community development corporations with others interested in the development and management of housing for low and moderate income persons in San Diego County to mutually…
The policy & innovation center's (pic) mission is to unlock the region's potential by cultivating and building partnerships. our niche is to address intractable issues that can only be solved with cross-sector, multi-jurisdictional…
San Diego Jewish Academy empowers each student to learn for life, guided by Jewish values and rooted in strength of community.
Dreams for Change's mission is to respond to the needs of San Diegans by creating innovative and cost-effective programs to empower and stabilize the lives of under-served families and individuals.
The mission of the building industry association of san diego is to proactively promote a positive business environment for the land development, home building and commercial development industry throughout san diego county.
To support and cultivate sustainable employment opportunities for San Diego County residents contributing to a prosperous local economy.
California Streets Initiative is a non-profit that practices solutions journalism at its five news websites listed above to educate inform and empower its readers.
The mission of investigative newsource is to produce investigative and community-powered journalism that informs citizens of san diego and imperial counties.
San Francisco CASA transforms the lives of children and youth traumatized and displaced in the foster care and related systems by providing one consistent, caring volunteer advocate, trained to address each childs needs in the court and…
Advocating for Human-Centered Design as a regional approach to improve economic, social, and civic life in our community.Design Forward Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to leveraging the power of design to drive social impact.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The San Diego Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Goldin Institute. 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 32 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
31 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. 31 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 VOICES FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds BALBOA PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds REGIONAL TASK FORCE ON THE HOMELESS ↗
- Who funds Neighborhood House Association ↗
- Who funds Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Counties ↗
- Who funds THE SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VOICE OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds SECOND CHANCE INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN DISCOVERY MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds CUREBOUND ↗
- Who funds PROJECT RESTORE HOPE ↗
- Who funds CalMatters ↗
- Who funds HELEN WOODWARD ANIMAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds Med4OurWorld Inc ↗
- Who funds THE SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY INTERFACE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds LUX ART INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds FOCUSING PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds PROMISES2KIDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHALLENGED ATHLETES INC ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE GOLDIN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds JUST IN TIME FOR FOSTER YOUTH ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS ↗
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 · The Parker Foundation · David C Copley Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · Sempra Foundation · Girard Foundation · The Nordson Corporation Foundation · The Patricia and Christopher Weil Family Foundation · Walter J & Betty C Zable 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 Ellis 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 Ellis Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ellis 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.