· Private foundation
Heller Foundation of San Diego
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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k27 grants · $113k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $145k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $67k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO | $67,000 |
| ANZA-BORREGO FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| YMCA OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY | $35,000 |
| YOSEMITE CONSERVANCY | $20,000 |
| CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| FRIENDS OF SUNSET CLIFF | $15,000 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF SAN DIEGO | $10,000 |
| YWCA SAN DIEGO COUNTY | $10,000 |
| OLIVEWOOD GARDENS LEARNING CENTER | $5,000 |
| CHANGING TIDES FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF US | $5,000 |
| SAN DIEGO BIRD ALLIANCE | $5,000 |
| EMILIO NARES FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF SAN | $5,000 |
| GIRLS SCOUTS SAN DIEGO | $5,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $167k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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 +34% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
48 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2025, 23 since wound down; 9 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $52k 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
- ZSZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO6× · 2020–2025 · $372k · revenue +77%
- AFANZA-BORREGO FOUNDATION6× · 2020–2025 · $130k · revenue +54%
- YOYMCA OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY3× · 2023–2025 · $89k · revenue +55%
Funded once
- BSBOY SCOUTS OF AMERICAone grant, 2023 · $10k
- BBBIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF SAN DIEGO CTone grant, 2024 · $10k
- SDSAN DIEGO IMPERIAL CENTERone grant, 2020 · $8k
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.
Nature collective's mission is to drive a passion for nature for all. we think inclusively and diversely when serving those devoid of nature those who remember nature and want to connect back to it and those who have an affinity with…
Acquire, manage and protect land in perpetuity that supports sensitive habitats and species, and to educate and inspire people and communities as stewards and advocates of their natural environment.
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
The mission of san diego botanic garden: we garden to create, share, and apply plant wisdom in our world. the organization's diverse topography and wide variety of microclimates provides visitors with the varied sensations of strolling…
Balboa Park Conservancy (the Conservancy) was organized on November 3, 1923. The Conservancy is the City of San Diegos (the City) partner and advocated for the greater good of Balboa Park (the Park). The Conservancy collaborated with and…
To promote, protect and restore the natural habitats in San Diego County's canyons and creeks. We do this by fostering education and ongoing community involvement in stewardship and advocacy, and by collaborating with other organizations.
Institute of Public Strategies (IPS) is a nonprofit corporation that receives its funding from local and federal governmental agencies and private foundations, through long-term grants or contracts to provide community-level services…
Save Oceanside Sand is a group of local activists dedicated to restoring and preserving the beaches of Oceanside, California. Working with local, regional, state, and federal authorities, our mission is to protect this vital resource by…
Law enforcement agencies in today's environment find it difficult to cope with the magnitude of crime without the involved support of business, media and community. Since 1981, the San Diego County Crime Commission has built public…
To elevate the quality of life in our urban communities through improvements, services, and activations in downtown's parks and open spaces.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Diego Center for Children and the most unlike its peers is Changing Tides 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 33 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
49 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. 49 of the 73 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 ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds ANZA-BORREGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOSEMITE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds FOREVER BALBOA PARK ↗
- Who funds The San Diego River Park Foundation ↗
- Who funds YWCA OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Cabrillo National Monument Foundation ↗
- Who funds OUTDOOR OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO HUMANE SOCIETY AND SPCA ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS SAN DIEGO-IMPERIAL COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds San Diego Bird Alliance ↗
- Who funds JACOBS & CUSHMAN SAN DIEGO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds LIVING COAST DISCOVERY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MONARCH SCHOOL PROJECT ↗
- Who funds San Diego-Imperial Council Boy Scouts of America ↗
- Who funds ELDERHELP OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds OLIVEWOODS GARDENS & LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds San Diego Parks Foundation ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO COASTKEEPER ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF MAN DBA MUSEUM OF US ↗
- Who funds UNITED THROUGH READING ↗
- Who funds VOICES FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
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: The San Diego Foundation · The Conrad Prebys Foundation · Pratt Memorial Fund · Samuel I & John Henry Fox Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · Sempra Foundation · The Nordson Corporation Foundation · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · The Cushman Foundation · The Parker Foundation · Art Pratt Foundation of Old Mission Rc
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 Heller Foundation of San Diego 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.