· Private foundation
J & M Lam Family 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $1k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $43k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAN FRANCISCO CHINATOWN LION CLUB FOUNDATION | $33,000 |
| RIVER OF LIFE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CHINATOWN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO POLICE ASSOCIATION SURVIVOR BENEFIT FOUNDATION | $50 |
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 (FY17–23, $18k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +17% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 9 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k 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
- RORIVER OF LIFE FOUNDATION5× · 2021–2025 · $72k · revenue +55%
- CHCHINESE HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION3× · 2017–2020 · $12k · revenue +15%
- FBFAMILY BRIDGES INC3× · 2017–2020 · $5k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- VCVISION CARE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $5k
- RORIVER OF LIFE CHURCH INCone grant, 2019 · $5k
- CNCHINESE NEWCOMER SERVICEone grant, 2021 · $3k
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.
Serve the Chinese community in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond through providing TV and online programs that promote positive cultural and spiritual influences.
Kong Chow Benevolent Association is a mutual benefit organization established to serve both the physical and spiritual needs of the Chinese community in the Bay Area through the operation of the Kong Chow Temple, the Kong Chow cemetery and…
East Bay Chinese School's mission is to provide Chinese language and culture classes to educate our students in the appreciation of Chinese heritage, promote cross-cultural understanding and prepare them in becoming community leaders.
To promote vitality and growth to businesses and advocate for the Oakland Chinatown community
The mission of Asian American Community Center of Santa Clara County (AASC) is to provide health, human, and economic development services to low income families and individuals to enable them to become actively participating citizens in…
To elevate underserved communities and gives voice to equality through education and contemporary art.
Operate school to teach Chinese language to students from kindergarten to 12th grade.
Providing professional training of Chinese Medicine (TCM), including acupuncture, Chinese herbology, acupressure, Qigong and so on, granting the students Masters degree. Its a three to four years teaching program.
Evangelism to Chinese in the US and Asia including sponsoring seminars retreats as well as evangelists in Taiwan.
Our mission is to prepare children for Kindergarten and beyond by promoting educational achievement, ensuring household economic stability and strengthening cultural identity. We fulfill our mission by operating 2 core programs the child…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chinese Hospital Association and the most unlike its peers is River of Life Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 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. 11 of the 33 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 RIVER OF LIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Chinese Newcomers Service Center ↗
- Who funds CHINESE HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FAMILY BRIDGES INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Womens Division Christian Service Gum Moon Residence Hall ↗
- Who funds MILLBRAE EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LOVE AND CONFLICT PEACEMAKING MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds MILLBRAE MEADOWS PTO ↗
- Who funds CHINATOWN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds CHINESE CHRISTIAN MISSION 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: United Way of the Bay Area · The San Francisco Foundation · Pov & May Tov Family Foundation · Shp Christian Foundation · San Francisco Association of Realtors Foundation · Asian Pacific Fund · Cathay Bank Foundation · United Way Worldwide · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 J & M Lam Family 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 J & M Lam Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to J & M Lam Family 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.