· Private foundation
Forestsong 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
95% of Forestsong Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Schwab Charitable Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 7 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Forestsong Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 8 organizations, $226k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2023
- Under $10k7 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $144k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Googain Maxreal Foundation | $94,000 |
| Santa Clara County Medical Associat | $50,000 |
| SVIDEAORG | $15,000 |
| Stanford Medicine | $10,000 |
| UCSF | $10,000 |
| Kidron International Missions Inc | $10,000 |
| Palo Alto Medical Foundation | $10,000 |
| Milpitas High School | $8,208 |
| WHU Alumni Science Foundation | $5,000 |
| University of Florida | $5,000 |
| Humane Society of Silicon Valley | $5,000 |
| Santa Clara County Peace Officers F | $2,000 |
| SOAR Foundation | $1,500 |
| Wikimedia Foundation | $100 |
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, $48k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 98% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Forestsong 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. Read by recipient address, 33% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 31% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
25 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2023, 15 since wound down; 13 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- POPRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE5× · 2017–2021 · $55k · revenue +39%
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches6× · 2017–2022 · $47k · revenue +46%
- HSHUMANE SOCIETY SILICON VALLEY6× · 2018–2023 · $45k · revenue +64%
Funded once
- ESEVERGREEN SCHOOL DISTRICTone grant, 2017 · $20k
- MFMAO FAMILY FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue ×36
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE OCEAN CLEANUP FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue +377%
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.
Save Cantonese is an international movement that sustains and celebrates Cantonese language and culture. We have three Strategic Aims: a) protect and strengthen educational and research infrastructure for the Cantonese language, b) affirm…
Nurture empathy and connection by engaging communities with socially relevant contemporary art
Organization's mission ====================== the university of california, san francisco(ucsf) is among the world's leading universities dedicated to advancing health worldwide through biomedical research, graduate-level education in the…
See schedule osfmoma believes the art of our time is vital and shares it with passion and purpose, and that art and the creative process can open minds and help build a better world. for that reason, we assemble unparalleled collections,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Valley Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Mao Family Foundation. 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 21 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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 71 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 GOOGAIN MAXREAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY SILICON VALLEY ↗
- Who funds SUTTER BAY MEDICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA FIRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CITRUS COUNTY 4-H ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds KIDRON INTERNATIONAL MISSIONS INC ↗
- Who funds FREMONT UNION HIGH SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ASIAN AMERICAN FOR BETTER COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds Friends of Children with Special Needs ↗
- Who funds Kind One ↗
- Who funds MAO FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN JOSE POLICE OFFICERS' ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE OCEAN CLEANUP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds SILVER LINING MISSIONS ↗
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: Analog Devices Foundation · Bright Funds Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Forestsong 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 Forestsong Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Forestsong 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.