· Private foundation
Esper A Petersen 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 $10k22 grants · $83k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $203k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $475k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Schwab Charitable | $154,758 |
| Westlake Christian Academy | $70,000 |
| VC Colab Foundation | $50,368 |
| Los Angeles Opera | $50,000 |
| Madison Project at Santa Monica Col | $50,000 |
| Salvation Army | $50,000 |
| Cedars Sinai Medical Center | $50,000 |
| Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra | $40,000 |
| Nenn Foundation | $25,000 |
| The Foundation for Pierce College | $25,000 |
| Friends of Robinson Gardens | $22,500 |
| OC Pom Rescue | $15,000 |
| Planned Parenthood | $15,000 |
| Animal Tracks | $10,000 |
| The Rescue Train | $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, $77k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 86% 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.
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.
61 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2025, 28 since wound down; 5 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $87k 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
- VCVC COLAB FOUNDATION8× · 2018–2025 · $566k · revenue +100% · 78% of their budget
CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER9× · 2017–2025 · $555k · revenue +63%- FOFRIENDS OF ROBINSON GARDENS INC8× · 2017–2025 · $78k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- NWNEW WEST SYMPHONY ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2017 · $60k · revenue -25%
- KSKINDRED SPIRITS CARE FARMone grant, 2022 · $55k · revenue -10%
- FFFUND FOR RESOURCE CONSERVATIONone grant, 2017 · $50k
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.
C.A.R.E.S.MISSION STATEMENT*Rescue, foster and find good homes for abandoned and homeless domestic and farm animals.*Spay/neuter abandoned and homeless cats and dogs, as well as help low income families with same.*Conduct TNR+ programs to…
Our mission is to rescue pets that have been impounded at los angeles county's 25 overcrowded public shelters - providing proper care, shelter, and then placement. we also provide pet owners with alternatives when they think they have no…
Spcala is dedicated to the prevention of cruelty to animals through education, law enforcement, intervention and advocacy.
In addition to rescue and adoption, pet orphans provides a wide range of services including education, medical/financial, spay/neuter, and training assistance.
The california wildlife center (cwc) takes responsibility for the protection of all native wildlife through rehabilitiation, education and conservation. as the los angeles area's premier wildlife medical care and rehabilitation facility,…
The org's mission is to rescue, nurture, and relocate at-risk animals in the ca central valley.
Sante DOr is a no-kill animal adoption center serving the Los Angeles community, predominantly staffed by volunteers.
We will rescue labradors and retrievers, mixed and pure breed, young and old, and aswe can other breeds in need. we will provide a soft bed, safety, medical care,training, and love to rehabilitate these amazing dogs giving them a new…
Conduct animal rescues, rehabilitation and rehome senior animals abandoned to the shelter's system.
To prevent animal abuse and neglect, enforce the anti-cruelty laws of the State of California and promote the wellbeing of animals.
To substantially reduce animal shelter euthanasia and intake by providing high quality, low cost veterinary services to underserved communities in the los angeles area.
Providing a helping hand to homeless pets in our community. As an all-volunteer, 501c3 organization, we rely on donations from foundations, local businesses, and individuals like you. Join us and support our life saving programs today.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Villa Esperanza Services and the most unlike its peers is Westlake Christian Academy. 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 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
77 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. 77 of the 125 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 DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds ST JOHN'S HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VC COLAB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds VENTURA COUNTY TAXPAYERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES REGIONAL FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds OC POM RESCUE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF ROBINSON GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds WESTLAKE CHRISTIAN ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds THE LOS ANGELES CHAMBER ORCHESTRA SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds ANIMAL TRACKS INC ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR PIERCE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE RESCUE TRAIN ↗
- Who funds NEW WEST SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds KINDRED SPIRITS CARE FARM ↗
- Who funds Beit T'Shuvah ↗
- Who funds THE LEELA INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE PEPPER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Nenn Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds LAKE GENEVA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Burnon Inc dba Rubicon Theatre Company ↗
- Who funds DREAM FETCHERS ↗
- Who funds CHP 11-99 FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FROSTED FACES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Shepherds Paws Animal Rescue Inc ↗
- Who funds A Purposeful Rescue Inc ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF VENTURA COUNTY ↗
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: Ventura County Community Foundation · California Community Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · Conrad N Hilton Foundation · Mary Jo and Hank Greenberg Animal Welfare Foundation · Santa Barbara Foundation · Sherwood Country Club Charitable Foundation · Colburn Foundation · The Wood-Claeyssens Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · The Ahmanson Foundation · Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors 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 Esper A Petersen 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 Esper A Petersen Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Esper A Petersen 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.