· Private foundation
Heffernan Group Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k177 grants · $325k
- $10k–50k66 grants · $849k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $210k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ICA SAN FRANCISCO WORK STUDY INC | $84,000 |
| LITTLE MIRACLES | $66,000 |
| CRISTO REY DE LA SALLE EAST BAY WORK STUDY PROGRAM INC | $60,000 |
| CRISTO REY SAN JOSE WORK STUDY CORPORATION | $42,000 |
| FACE SF | $25,000 |
| SWORDS TO PLOWSHARES | $25,000 |
| ICA CRISTO REY ACADEMY | $25,000 |
| CATHOLIC COMMUNITY SERVICES | $25,000 |
| 10000 DEGREES | $20,000 |
| SPREAD THE WORD NEVADA | $20,000 |
| ST VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| BELLARMINE COLLEGE PREPARATORY | $17,000 |
| HAMPTON UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| DILLARD UNIVERSITY | $15,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 53% 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 +47% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
350 repeat relationships — 110 still active in FY2024, 240 since wound down; 122 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 57% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $590k 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
- CRCRISTO REY SAN JOSE WORK STUDY CORPORATION5× · 2020–2024 · $194k · revenue +7%
- POPRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE5× · 2017–2021 · $154k · revenue +39%
- LMLittle Miracles Inc3× · 2022–2024 · $90k · revenue +149%
Funded once
- TATHE AFFORDABILITY PROJECTgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $510k · revenue +227% · 45% of their budget
- IICAone grant, 2019 · $68k
- ATAT THE CROSSROADSone grant, 2018 · $50k · revenue -78%
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.
To enhance the lives of people with developmental and other disabilities by creating quality, affordable housing options.
By advocating for quality early care and education, empowering families with information and financial support, and building the capabilities of educators, Children's Council of San Francisco ensures that every child in San Francisco has…
The mission of the st. vincent de paul society of san francisco (svdp-sf) is to offer hope and service on a direct person-to-person basis, working to break the cycles of homelessness and domestic violence.
Mercy house's most significant exempt activities focus on ending homelessness and providing comprehensive housing and support services. the organization offers homeless prevention, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and…
Caminar builds strength and stability through comprehensive mental health and substance use treatment delivered through evidence-based, whole-person care.
Our mission is to create housing and service options that model, with respect and dignity, sustainable, environmentally sensitive, affordable communities for people of limited resources.
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…
All children need a childhood. Allies for Every Child brings together and strengthens families, cultivating conditions for children to succeed in life. (Continues on Schedule O)
The mission is to build health equity in silicon valley.
California casa was founded in 1987. its mission is to ensure that children and youth in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems have both a voice and the services they need to thrive. we achieve this by strengthening and empowering…
Kidworks inspires purpose in youth, fuels their growth, and catalyzes their impact in the community and the world.
To provide dignity, respect and choice for persons with developmental disabilities
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Compass Family Services and the most unlike its peers is The Beecher's Foundation. 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 36 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 13% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.7% 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.
644 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. 644 of the 1,112 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 THE AFFORDABILITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds CRISTO REY SAN JOSE WORK STUDY CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds SOCIUS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Little Miracles Inc ↗
- Who funds 10000 DEGREES ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC CLINICS ↗
- Who funds PATRA PUBLIC CHARITY ↗
- Who funds ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds Spelman College ↗
- Who funds CRISTO REY DE LA SALLE EAST BAY WORK STUDY PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds LITTLE WISHES ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA HUMAN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds STAND FOR FAMILIES FREE OF VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds AT THE CROSSROADS ↗
- Who funds CANAL ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE TRACK ↗
- Who funds SACRED HEART NATIVITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SAINT MARY'S COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Collective Impact ↗
- Who funds BUCKELEW PROGRAMS ↗
- Who funds RUBICON PROGRAMS INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSING INDUSTRY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HAMILTON FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds The Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation Inc ↗
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: Tipping Point Community · San Jose Mercury News Wish Book Fund Inc · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · Bothin Foundation · The William G Irwin Charity Foundation · United Way of the Bay Area · McNabb Foundation · Leonard & Beryl Buck Foundation · Sutter Bay Hospitals · Lowell Berry Foundation · Sisters of St Joseph Healthcare Foundation · Dean and Margaret Lesher 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 Heffernan Group 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.
- Albertina Kerr Centers — 74% of income from government
- Human Solutions Inc Dba Our Just Future — 17% of income from government
- Ywca of Greater Portland — 15% of income from government
- Impact Nw — 8% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Friendly House Inc — 3% of income from government
- William Temple House — 0% of income from government
- Quinnipiac University — 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 Heffernan Group Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Heffernan Group 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.