· Private foundation
Ferguson Foundation
Its FY2019 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 FY2017–2019.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2019
- $10k–50k9 grants · $308k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MOORPARK COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $223,842 |
| LISA FERGUSON MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP FUNDUNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND | $200,000 |
| INTERFACE CHILDREN & FAMILY SERVICES | $175,000 |
| NEW WEST SYMPHONY | $156,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $154,000 |
| SOUTHERN PROVERTY LAW CENTER | $125,000 |
| ALASKA WILDLIFE ALLIANCE | $110,000 |
| WILDERNESS YOUTH PROJECT | $105,000 |
| PROJECT CUDDLE INC | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| FULFILLMENT FUND | $70,000 |
| WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT | $60,000 |
| INNOCENCE PROJECT | $55,000 |
| ONE HEARTLAND | $55,000 |
| HUMANE SOCIETY OF VENTURA COUNTY | $35,000 |
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 (FY17–19, $605k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 50% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +34% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2019, 3 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (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 FY2019, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $424k 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
Interface Children Family Services3× · 2017–2019 · $300k · revenue +86%- SPSOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC3× · 2017–2019 · $175k · revenue +10%
- AWAlaska Wildlife Alliance3× · 2017–2019 · $130k · revenue ×27 · 71% of their budget
Funded once
- CHCAMARILLO HOSPICE CORPORATIONone grant, 2017 · $5k
- MCMANNA CONEJO VALLEY FOOD BANKone grant, 2017 · $2k
- D(DART (DROWNING ACCIDENT RESCUE TEAM)one grant, 2017 · $2k
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 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 SPCA Monterey County's Mission is assuring compassionate treatment of all animals through rescue, rehabilitation, protection and education. The SPCA shelters homeless, neglected, and abused pets, including dogs, cats, horses, exotic…
Provide a natural sanctuary to wild cats in need and inspire change to end the captive wildlife crisis.
Santa barbara wildlife care network (sbwcn) serves to rescue, rehabilitate and return to the wild sick, injured, orphaned, or oil-impaired wild birds, reptiles, amphibians, and small mammals in santa barbara and ventura counties and to…
A champion for animals since 1967, PAWS is a nationally recognized leader - rehabilitating injured and orphaned wildlife, sheltering and adopting homeless cats and dogs, and educating people to make a better world for animals and people.
Animal care sanctuary's lifesaving mission as a no kill organization envisions a community that promotes turning compassion into action for companion animals by: 1.) adopting healthy pet companions into loving homes. 2.) promoting the…
The mission of rescue life is to save the lives of wild, farm, and domestic animals which include horses, pigs, donkeys, llamas, zebras, alpacas,and dogs. the mission includes providing care, shelter, and adoption services. rescue life…
To protect endangered species.
Connect conservationists and supporters, deploy resources to the field, provide conservationists with tools and support they need to succeed.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Wilderness Society and the most unlike its peers is Red Bucket Equine Rescue. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 32 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) — 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 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.
24 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. 24 of the 31 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 Interface Children Family Services ↗
- Who funds THE MOORPARK COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NEW WEST SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PROJECT CUDDLE INC ↗
- Who funds Alaska Wildlife Alliance ↗
- Who funds FULFILLMENT FUND ↗
- Who funds Wilderness Youth Project Inc ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds ONE HEARTLAND ↗
- Who funds THE INNOCENCE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BEST FRIENDS ANIMAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BIG CAT RESCUE CORP ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF VENTURA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds RED BUCKET EQUINE RESCUE ↗
- Who funds EXOTIC CAT REFUGE ↗
- Who funds FOOD SHARE INC ↗
- Who funds MY STUFF BAGS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TEDDY BEAR CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOPE FOR PAWS ↗
- Who funds CAMARILLO HOSPICE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds LIFESAVERS INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL BIRD RESCUE ↗
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: California Community Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Network for Good · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Ferguson 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
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 Ferguson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ferguson 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.