· Private foundation
Isness 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.
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 |
|---|---|
| MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC | $500 |
| AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS | $500 |
| MAP INTERNATIONAL | $350 |
| Individual grant recipient | $330 |
| SHARE OUR STRENGTH | $250 |
| BUTTE HUMANE SOCIETY | $250 |
| KQED INC | $180 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INCORPORATED | $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, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 74% 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.
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 +46% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 15 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, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $750 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
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches6× · 2017–2025 · $4k · revenue +46%
- GSGERMAN SHEPHERD RESCUE OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA5× · 2019–2023 · $3k · revenue +45%
- BHBUTTE HUMANE SOCIETY7× · 2017–2025 · $2k · revenue +219%
Funded once
- SASALVATION ARMY SOUTHERN TERRITORY EMERGENCY DISASTERone grant, 2018 · $2k
- CHChico Housing Action Teamgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $2k · revenue +92%
- HHHAVEN HUMANE SOCIETYgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $2k · revenue +89%
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.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
To boldly engage the world's greatest crises in partnership with the church.
(msh) saves lives and improves the health of the world's poorest (see schedule o) and most vulnerable people by closing the gap between knowledge and action in public health.
The mission of the global alliance for improved nutrition (gain) is to improve the consumption of healthier diets for all, especially the most vulnerable, by improving the availability, affordability, desirability, and sustainability of…
Water.org's goal is to bring safe water and sanitation to the world through access to small, affordable loans.
RA works at the intersection of business, agriculture & forests to improve lives & protect nature by transforming how land is used, production of goods & consumer choices.
To nourish the world's hungry through uniting and advancing food banks.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
Plant with purpose, a christian nonprofit organization, reverses deforestation and poverty around the world by transforming the lives of the rural poor. we do this through: - watershed restoration & regenerative agriculture - savings…
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
Wildaid's mission is to inspire change and empower the world to protect wildlife and vital habitats from critical threats.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Action Against Hunger - Usa and the most unlike its peers is Butte Environmental Council. 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 39 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.
54 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. 54 of the 68 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 American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds GERMAN SHEPHERD RESCUE OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds BUTTE HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds RESURGE INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Chico Housing Action Team ↗
- Who funds HAVEN HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds Butte Environmental Council ↗
- Who funds HEART TO HEART INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds GLOBALGIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ARBOR DAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAP International Inc ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Mercy Ships International ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS AMERICA ↗
- Who funds BENEVOLENT HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN HUMANE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA FIRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SACRAMENTO RIVER WATERSHED PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds GIVE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds IC Nutrition for Children ↗
- Who funds WORLD MEDICAL RELIEF INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Espavo ↗
- Who funds Second Harvest ↗
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: North Valley Community Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Shell USA Company Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Network for Good · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Isness 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Comfort Cases 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.