· Public charity
Excellence in Investing for Childrens Causes
The conference brings together some of the world's top investors and other prominent thinkers to share their investment ideas and insights.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 3 grants below total $255,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $265,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $10,000 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SMART | $85,000 |
| EatLearnPlay Foundation | $85,000 |
| The Posse Foundation | $85,000 |
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 (FY18–22, $249k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +24% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 6 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
- CECommunity Education Partnerships5× · 2018–2022 · $249k · revenue +128% · 27% of their budget
- ELEAT LEARN PLAY FOUNDATION3× · 2023–2025 · $220k · revenue +12%
- SMSCHOOLS MENTORING AND RESOURCES TEAM INC3× · 2023–2025 · $220k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- MCMeritus College Fundone grant, 2017 · $33k
- AAAlive and Freeone grant, 2017 · $33k · revenue +17%
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.
Fellows persist through graduation and into careers that build long-term economic mobility for themselves & their communities.
In partnership with educators, CollegeSpring helps students impacted by poverty demonstrate their full potential on college and career readiness assessments that unlock better opportunities after high school. Our vision is that every…
To provide support, resources, and guidance to students with learning differences as they transition to, persist, and succeed in their educational and vocational endeavors.
Berkeley Community Scholars empowers Berkeley youth who face racial, economic, and other barriers to achieving their college dreams by providing a unique experience of scholarships, advising, mentoring, and a community of support.
SGAP Leaders empowers teens to become agents of change in their communities and beyond by thinking critically, applying STEM, and championing social impact. Our students 1) brainstorm about projects that they would like to lead (all…
Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. STEM Advantage mentors, prepares, and inspires first-generation, low-income, and underserved college students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). We level…
Building Bridges Education (BBE) is a non-profit organization at the forefront of creating transformative, high-impact programming. BBE is committed to equity-driven initiatives that empower students to embark on journeys of…
AEF serves as a critical bridge toward equitable and inclusive educational outcomes for Alameda TK-12 public school students.
At Compass, social and emotional learning is as important as academic achievement. We teach to students strengths, ensuring academic growth and success with self-advocacy and learning skills, meeting students where they are while…
Our services include mentoring, educational & cultural enrichment activities, and college access guidance. Partnership Scholars Program offers students the skills, knowledge and support they need to prepare for, enter, and graduate from…
Prepare low-income students to finish high school, graduate college and succeed in life.
At college prep we believe in the foundational importance of scholarship, the value of dialogue, and the need for academically curious young people to belong to a kind, creative, diverse and joyful community. we challenge our students to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Schools Mentoring and Resources Team Inc (Smart) and the most unlike its peers is Ira Sohn Conference 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.
12 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.
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 Ira Sohn Conference Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds Community Education Partnerships ↗
- Who funds EAT LEARN PLAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SCHOOLS MENTORING AND RESOURCES TEAM INC (SMART) ↗
- Who funds Bridge the Gap College Prep ↗
- Who funds THE POSSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds 826 Valencia ↗
- Who funds Life Learning Academy ↗
- Who funds NEW DOOR VENTURES FKA GOLDEN GATE COMMUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds GENERATION CITIZEN INC ↗
- Who funds Meritus College Fund ↗
- Who funds Alive and Free ↗
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: Silicon Valley Community Foundation · East Bay Community Foundation · Tipping Point Community · The James Irvine Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · American Endowment Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Excellence in Investing for Childrens Causes 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 Excellence in Investing for Childrens Causes?
Find your warmest path to Excellence in Investing for Childrens Causes 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.