· Private foundation
Hillsborough Garden Club Trust
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $4,850 |
| PENINSULA OPEN SPACE TRUST | $4,850 |
| HILLSBOROUGH GARDEN CLUB | $2,500 |
| HILLSBOROUGH BEAUTIFICATION FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| SAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUE | $900 |
| SAN MATEO ARBORETOREUM | $800 |
| GARDENS OF GOLDEN GATE PARK | $800 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY OF CALIFORNIA | $500 |
| GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATORY | $500 |
| CALIFORNAI NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY | $400 |
| SAN MATEO COUNTY PARKS FOUNDATION | $250 |
| CIMATE RIGHTS INTERNATIONAL | $150 |
| CALIFORNIA WILDLIFE 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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 37% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +59% since the first grant, against +45% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 2 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, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- POPENINSULA OPEN SPACE TRUST7× · 2017–2025 · $56k · revenue +164%
- HGHILLSBOROUGH GARDEN CLUB5× · 2017–2025 · $24k · revenue +102%
- TGTHE GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA3× · 2017–2019 · $15k · revenue +49%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $6k
- RARandom Acts of Flowersone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue -87%
- CPCALL PRIMROSEone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +16%
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 ensure coast redwood forests in the santa cruz mountains thrive for generations to come. since 1900, sempervirens has protected more than 36,000 acres. learn more about our mission, vision, and strategic plan through 2030 at:…
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
Create and publish educational materials, conduct professional development, promote awareness, and sponsor research on the spectacular biological diversity of the State of CA.
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…
Since 2004, the South Bay Parkland Conservancy (SBPC) has been committed to preserving open space and creating more parks in the coastal cities of the South Bay in Los Angeles, CA. We are dedicated to helping make the community a better…
Protect, manage and preserve lands and wildlife having unique natural resources and cultural qualities within and near the foothills of the sierra nevada range.
Rancho santa ana botanic gardens promotes botany, conservation, and horticulture to inspire, inform and educate the public and scientific community about california's native flora. the garden is devoted to the collection, cultivation,…
We restore native plants to open spaces and neighborhoods, steward creeks and watersheds, and provide hands-on nature education
The Chile-California Council is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to developing and promoting joint endeavors and cooperative relations between Chile and California, as well as individuals, legal entities and other institutions in…
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…
Save mount diablo's mission is to preserve mount diablo's peaks, surrounding foothills, and watersheds; and its sustaining diablo range, through land acquisition and preservation strategies designed to protect the mountain's natural…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is California State Parks Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Burlingame Intermediate School Pta California Congress of Parents. 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 49 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 50 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 PENINSULA OPEN SPACE TRUST ↗
- Who funds HILLSBOROUGH GARDEN CLUB ↗
- Who funds THE GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Pollinator Partnership ↗
- Who funds Save The Bay ↗
- Who funds Random Acts of Flowers ↗
- Who funds CURIODYSSEY ↗
- Who funds CALL PRIMROSE ↗
- Who funds HILLSBOROUGH BEAUTIFICATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SANTA ROSA PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds THE HEAL PROJECT ↗
- Who funds VIDA VERDE NATURE EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO BOTANICAL GARDEN SOCIETY AT STRYBING ARBORETUM ↗
- Who funds PIE RANCH ↗
- Who funds San Mateo Arboretum Society Inc ↗
- Who funds BURLINGAME INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL PTA CALIFORNIA CONGRESS OF PARENTS ↗
- Who funds California Native Plant Society ↗
- Who funds VILLAGE HARVEST CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA WILDLIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MUTTVILLE ↗
- Who funds LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE 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: Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · Atkinson Foundation · Bothin Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · The San Francisco Foundation · Tomkat Ranch Educational Foundation · Sand Hill Foundation · Clif Family Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc
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 Hillsborough Garden Club Trust 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 Hillsborough Garden Club Trust?
Find your warmest path to Hillsborough Garden Club Trust 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.