· Private foundation
John and Miki Ford 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
- Under $10k11 grants · $36k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $13k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAINT LUKE PRODUCTIONS | $13,000 |
| CALIFORNIA YOUTH SERVICES | $6,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,030 |
| THE GUIDING STAR PROJECT | $5,000 |
| ARIZONA RIGHT TO LIFE | $5,000 |
| ST BERNADETTE CATHOLIC CHURCH | $3,900 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MARY | $2,500 |
| STUDENTS FOR LIFE | $2,500 |
| THE PENINSULA FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| BEVERLY CULTURAL CENTER | $2,000 |
| LEGATUS | $1,490 |
| SISTERS OF ST BENEDICT | $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 (FY19–24, $39k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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.
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 +51% since the first grant, against +37% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 2 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; $5k 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
- TNTHE NAPA INSTITUTE4× · 2019–2022 · $83k · revenue +65%
Augustine Institute Inc4× · 2019–2022 · $70k · revenue +192%
ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM2× · 2019–2020 · $27k · revenue +97%
Funded once
- ODOPUS DEI (LEONINE FORUM)one grant, 2019 · $20k
JUNIPERO SERRA CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOLgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $13k · revenue +37%- FOFRIENDS OF THE TORONTO ORATORYone grant, 2023 · $9k · revenue -56%
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.
St. marys university, as a catholic marianist university, fosters the formation of people in faith and educates leaders for the common good through community, integrated liberal arts and professional education, and academic excellence.
University education grounded in the traditions and faith of the roman catholic church
The institute's mission is to conduct research on key issues facing society to help both the church and society deal thoughtfully with the major issues they face globally. the institute also sponsors and conducts research and scholarship…
Collegium Institute is a Catholic intellectual apostolate that fosters the Catholic intellectual tradition within the University of Pennsylvania community and within the greater region and secular academia. (Continued on Sch. O)
Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit and Catholic institution of higher education, welcomes students of diverse backgrounds and prepares them to lead meaningful lives with and for others; to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work…
The International Catholic Jurists Forum (ICJF) was established to produce, compile, and share resources on fundamental human rights under attack in the regional and international human rights protection systems. It operates as a forum for…
To foster the vitality of community through learning and the pursuit of wisdom.
Catholic answers is an apostolate dedicated to serving christ by bringing the fullness of catholic truth to the world. we help good catholics become better catholics, bring former catholics home, and lead non-catholics into the fullness of…
We are a catholic university named for saint john henry newman and founded by the adorers of the blood of christ for the purpose of empowering graduates to transform society. our core values (see schedule o for continuation)
St. john's university is a catholic, vincentian, metropolitan, and global institution of higher education (continued on schedule o).
The corporation of saint mary's college, notre dame (saint mary's) is a catholic, residential, women's, liberal arts college offering undergraduate degrees and co-educational graduate programs. (continued in schedule o)
To make the catholic intellectual tradition a vital part of the culture of universities. to enrich academic communities at the university of chicago, across the nation, and the world with the insights of catholic thought. to dialogue with…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ethics and Public Policy Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is California Youth Services. 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 26 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 62 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 NAPA INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Augustine Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM ↗
- Who funds California Youth Services ↗
- Who funds Students for Life of America Inc ↗
- Who funds SAINT LUKE PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds JUNIPERO SERRA CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Sacred Story Institute ↗
- Who funds Legatus ↗
- Who funds University of Mary ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE TORONTO ORATORY ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KINGDOM ALLIANCE BUILDERS ↗
- Who funds THE GUIDING STAR PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Wyoming Catholic College ↗
- Who funds ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE LEONINE FORUM INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR THE POOR INC ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA RIGHT TO LIFE ↗
- Who funds TALLER SAN JOSE HOPE BUILDERS ↗
- Who funds MARY'S SHELTER ↗
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: Napa Institute Foundation · Angels Among US Inc · Knights of Columbus Charitable Fund Inc · Edwards Lifesciences Foundation · Orange County Community Foundation · Robert and Bernarda Neal Foundation · The Foundation of the Catholic Diocese of Columbus · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn 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 John and Miki Ford 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.
- Food for the Poor 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to John and Miki Ford Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John and Miki Ford 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.