· Private foundation
Jessie Cheng Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k39 grants · $94k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $101k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ASIAN ART MUSEUM | $50,000 |
| COMMONWEALTH CLUB | $20,000 |
| CELLO MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER | $20,000 |
| WILLIE BROWN INSTITUTE ON POLITICS AND PUBLIC SERVICE | $20,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY | $17,500 |
| COMMUNITY YOUTH CENTER | $12,000 |
| CHINESE HOSPITAL | $11,025 |
| NORTH BEACH CITIZENS | $5,250 |
| SAN FRANCISCO HOST COMMITTEE | $5,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER | $5,000 |
| JOHN BURTON ADVOCATE FOR YOUTH | $5,000 |
| BROOKER WASHINGTON COMMUNITY SERVICE CENTER | $5,000 |
| COMMUNITY HEALTH & EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CHINATOWN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CENTER | $5,000 |
| CENTER FOR ASIAN AMERICAN MEDIA | $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 (FY20–24, $50k) 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 +30% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 24 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, 57% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $106k 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
- SFSAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY5× · 2020–2024 · $113k · revenue +4%
- CFCenter for Asian American Media5× · 2020–2024 · $34k · revenue +302%
- NBNORTH BEACH CITIZENS5× · 2020–2024 · $27k · revenue +75%
Funded once
- TCTHE COMMONWEALTH CLUB - WORLD AFFAIRS OF CALIFORNIAone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue -5%
- SPSF PARK ALLIANCEone grant, 2022 · $10k
- TWTHE WILLIE BROWN JR INSTITUTEone grant, 2020 · $10k
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 elevate underserved communities and gives voice to equality through education and contemporary art.
Own and operate a collaborative platform anchored in san francisco chinatown that celebrates, explores, and supports leading and pioneering creative experessions at the intersection of community, culture, art and media.
The Asian Law Caucus's mission is to promote, advance, and represent the legal and civil rights of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, recognizing that social, economic, political and racial inequalities continue to exist…
The National Japanese American Historical Society, Inc. (NJAHS) charitable nonprofit organization dedicated to the collection, preservation, authentic interpretation, and sharing of historical information of the Japanese American…
To introduce classic chinese culture to the residents of san francisco bay area; to promote ancient asian arts to san francisco bay area.
Unitedly is a nonprofit organization based in San Mateo County, California. Unitedly was established to ensure Asian families and communities have access to equitable opportunities and resources to thrive in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
To educate the general public of chinese culture in order to promote and improve the business conditions within the chinese community in the san francisco bay area and worldwide.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The San Francisco Japantown Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Community Youth Center. 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 40 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
72 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. 72 of the 113 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 ASIAN ART MUSEUM FOUNDATION OF SAN FRANCISCO ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds Center for Asian American Media ↗
- Who funds NORTH BEACH CITIZENS ↗
- Who funds John Burton Advocates for Youth ↗
- Who funds SPUR - SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA PLANNING AND URBAN RESEARCH ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CHINATOWN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds CHINESE HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB - WORLD AFFAIRS OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds ROSE PAK COMMUNITY FUND ↗
- Who funds Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO HOST COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds Chinese for Affirmative Action ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY YOUTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY YOUTH CENTER OF SAN FRANCISCO ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC CHAMBER ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center Inc ↗
- Who funds JAPANTOWN COMMUNITY BENEFIT DISTRICT INC ↗
- Who funds APA FAMILY SUPPORT SERVICES ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Charity Cultural Services Center ↗
- Who funds BOOKER T WASHINGTON COMMUNITY SERVICE CENTER ↗
- Who funds JAPANESE COMMUNITY YOUTH COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HEALTH & EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Womens Division Christian Service Gum Moon Residence Hall ↗
- Who funds SELF-HELP FOR THE ELDERLY ↗
- Who funds THE SAN FRANCISCO JAPANTOWN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREENBELT ALLIANCEPEOPLE FOR OPEN SPACE ↗
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: McNabb Foundation · San Francisco Association of Realtors Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Asian Pacific Fund · Robert J Louie Memorial Fund · United Way of the Bay Area · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Bothin Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Stupski Foundation · The PG&E Corporation Foundation · Marin Community 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 Jessie Cheng Charitable 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 Jessie Cheng Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Jessie Cheng Charitable 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.