· Private foundation
John and Gwen Smart 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $60k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $1.0M
- $250k+6 grants · $2.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| USHER III INITIATIVE INC | $500,000 |
| NEW YORK WOMEN'S FOUNDATION | $450,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $420,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $350,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $300,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $300,000 |
| ROGOSIN INSTITUTE INC | $210,000 |
| STANFORD UNIVERSITY | $150,000 |
| AMERICAN NURSES FOUNDATION | $120,000 |
| CREATIVITY EXPLORED | $105,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA BIRD SANCTUARY | $100,000 |
| CORNELL UNIVERSITY | $85,000 |
| WOMEN IN NEED INC | $80,000 |
| CULTURAL ACTIVISM INTERNATIONAL PROJECT INC | $50,000 |
| THREE JEWELS OUTREACH CENTER INC | $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 (FY19–24, $2.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 29% of John and Gwen Smart Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +42% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down; 3 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $200k 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
- UIUSHER III INITIATIVE INC5× · 2020–2024 · $1.8M · revenue +42% · 46% of their budget
- CRCALIFORNIA RANGELAND TRUST5× · 2019–2023 · $971k · revenue +5%
- SBSANTA BARBARA BOTANIC GARDEN5× · 2019–2023 · $900k · revenue +213%
Funded once
- UIUSHER III INITIATIVEone grant, 2019 · $200k
- TSTHE SAN FRANCISCO BAY TRAIL PROJECTgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $160k · revenue +266%
- STSave The Baygraduatedone grant, 2019 · $150k · revenue +32%
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.
The uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
The sacramento zoo inspires appreciation, respect and a connection with wildlife and nature through education, recreation and conservation.
The ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Marin humane transforms lives through exceptional animal care, humane education, and advocacy. every day, marin humane inspires compassion and positive relationships between people and animals.
Connect conservationists and supporters, deploy resources to the field, provide conservationists with tools and support they need to succeed.
San diego zoo wildlife alliance is committed to saving species worldwide by uniting our expertise in wildlife care and conservation science with our dedication to inspiring passion for nature.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
To support educational, research and public functions and programs of the riverside campus of the university of california.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is California Rangeland Trust and the most unlike its peers is High Plateau Humane Society. 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 39 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.
23 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. 23 of the 34 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 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK WOMEN'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds USHER III INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA RANGELAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA BOTANIC GARDEN ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA BARBARA BIRD SANCTUARY ↗
- Who funds CREATIVITY EXPLORED INC ↗
- Who funds The Rogosin Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds WOMEN IN NEED INC ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds Coastal Ranches Conservancy ↗
- Who funds THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY TRAIL PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Save The Bay ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds CG JUNG INSTITUTE OF SAN FRANCISCO ↗
- Who funds ECHOING GREEN INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN NURSES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LIGHTHAWK ↗
- Who funds Day One of New York Inc ↗
- Who funds BURLINGAME LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HIGH PLATEAU HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
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: The San Francisco Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Network for Good · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 John and Gwen Smart 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.