· Private foundation
James S Bower 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 $10k3 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k36 grants · $799k
- $50k–250k19 grants · $1.7M
- $250k+2 grants · $690k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL INC | $400,000 |
| CARPINTERIA CHILDREN'S PROJECT | $290,000 |
| HOSPICE OF SANTA BARBARA INC | $222,500 |
| LEAP LEARN ENGAGE ADVOCATE PARTNER | $175,000 |
| CHILD ABUSE LISTENING MEDIATION INC | $150,000 |
| UNITE TO LIGHT | $150,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $112,000 |
| CENTER FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE AT FAI | $100,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION | $80,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA COTTAGE HOSPITAL FOUN | $80,000 |
| FUND FOR SANTA BARBARA INC | $80,000 |
| NATURAL CAPITALISM SOLUTIONS | $60,000 |
| LEGACY PHILANTHROPY WORKS | $55,000 |
| WORKMONEY FOUNDATION INC | $50,000 |
| SANSUM CLINIC | $50,000 |
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, $944k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +56% since the first grant, against +50% for the ones you funded once.
80 repeat relationships — 44 still active in FY2024, 36 since wound down; 14 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $575k 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
- CCCARPINTERIA CHILDREN'S PROJECT8× · 2017–2024 · $2.4M · revenue +90% · 27% of their budget
- SBSanta Barbara Education Foundation8× · 2017–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +57%
- HOHOSPICE OF SANTA BARBARA INC8× · 2017–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +70%
Funded once
- VNVISITING NURSE HOSPICE CARE OF SANTone grant, 2017 · $210k
- CFClimate Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $125k · revenue +50%
- TFTHE FOUNDATION FOR SANTA BARBARA CITY COLLEGEgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $50k · revenue +53%
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 end hunger and transform the health of our community by providing nourishment to those in need by acquiring and distributing safe nutritious food via local agencies and by providing education to solve hunger and nutritional problems in…
The mission of st. francis foundation of santa barbara is to promote and support health care.
Our mission is to protect public trail access build and maintain safe and sustainable trails and promote public engagement in land stewardship and trail use for all types of outdoor recreation.
To conserve natural resources, agricultural land and open spaces for present and future generations.
It is the mission of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital Foundation to solicit, receive, invest, maintain and distribute funds for the support of charitable, scientific, and educational activities of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
Cac serves santa barbara county's vulnerable populations through education and coordinated services so they may achieve economic stability, improve overall well-being and thrive.
Independent nonpartisan newsroom serving Santa Cruz County, California we are all watching and engaged in our local government, our needs are addressed, democracy works better and our community is stronger.
To promote philanthropy to make santa cruz county a better place to live, now and in the future.we bring together people, ideas, and resources to inspire philanthropy and accomplish great things.
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…
The organization was established to protect and restore the santa barbara channel and its watersheds through science-based advocacy, education, field work, community engagement, and citizen enforcement of environmental laws.
The budget center provides dependable, timely, policy guidance and public education through our independent research and analysis, public education, strategic collaborations, and communications to expand economic opportunities and promote…
Ciis is an institution of higher education that encourages an interdisciplinary approach to learning. over 1,700 students are enrolled in masters, doctoral, bachelor of arts completion programs, and certifications. ours is a mosaic of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Santa Barbara Foundation and the most unlike its peers is A T Still University of Health Sciences. 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 28 years old; the field is 19. 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 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
105 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. 105 of the 142 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 CARPINTERIA CHILDREN'S PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF SANTA BARBARA INC ↗
- Who funds CALM INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Isla Vista Youth Projects Inc dba LEAP LearnEngageAdvocatePartner ↗
- Who funds GOLETA EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SANSUM CLINIC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA NEIGHBORHOOD CLINICS ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Just Communities Central Coast ↗
- Who funds Future Leaders of America ↗
- Who funds STORYTELLER CHILDRENS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds SARAH HOUSE OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE AGENCY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR SANTA BARBARA INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN AND FAMILY RESOURCE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds THE VOTER PARTICIPATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds GAVIOTA COAST CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds DIGNITYMOVES ↗
- Who funds WHITE BUFFALO LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds TRANSITION HOUSE ↗
- Who funds Wilderness Youth Project Inc ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNITE TO LIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds Natural Capitalism Solutions Inc ↗
- Who funds Sanctuary Centers of Santa Barbara Inc ↗
- Who funds VOTER REGISTRATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF CARPINTERIA ↗
- Who funds Sansum Diabetes Research Institute ↗
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: Santa Barbara Foundation · Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · Towbes Foundation · Ann Jackson Family Foundation · The McCune Foundation · The Wood-Claeyssens Foundation · June G Outhwaite Charitable Trust JS Poucher KL Englert & CM Cooney Co-Tr · Latkin Charitable Foundation · Fund for Santa Barbara Inc · Alice Tweed Tuohy Foundation · Mosher 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 James S Bower 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.
- Community Solutions Inc — 55% 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 James S Bower Foundation?
Find your warmest path to James S Bower 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.