· Private foundation
John Christopher Bunting 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 $10k7 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRIENDS OF OAKLEY LIBRARY | $10,000 |
| SONOMA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| HANNA CENTER | $6,000 |
| SAN DAMENICO SCHOOL ANNUAL FUND | $5,000 |
| SEBASTIANI THEATRE FOUNDATION | $3,500 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION SONOMA COUNTY | $2,500 |
| SONOMA COUNTY VINTNERS FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| YOUNG AMERICANS FOR LIBERTY | $2,000 |
| THE ROTARY CLUB OF SONOMA VALLEY | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–19, $36k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 10% of John Christopher Bunting 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 +41% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 17 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, 60% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $16k 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
- SVSonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance3× · 2019–2023 · $40k · revenue +213%
- SVSONOMA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY2× · 2020–2025 · $25k · revenue +51%
- SCSONOMA COMMUNITY CENTER2× · 2019–2020 · $22k · revenue +59%
Funded once
- SVSONOMA VALLEY VINTNERS & GROWERS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $147k · revenue -90%
- CFCENTER FOR URBAN RENEWAL & EDUCATIONone grant, 2017 · $35k · revenue +19%
- TYTHE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF SONOMA COUNTYgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +141%
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.
Sonoma valley film society produces the annual international film festival
The Mission of the Symons Family Fund is to benefit, perform the functions of, and carry out the purposes of the Sonora Area Foundation that engage in charitable activities which benefit the residents of Tuolumne County, California.
See schedule osfmoma believes the art of our time is vital and shares it with passion and purpose, and that art and the creative process can open minds and help build a better world. for that reason, we assemble unparalleled collections,…
The Solano Community Foundation strengthens Solano County by advancing equity, supporting nonprofit resilience, and expanding access to philanthropy. We serve as a community leader, responsive grantmaker, and trusted partner for donors who…
The museum of sonoma county engages and inspires our diverse community with art and history exhibitions, collections, and public programs that are inclusive, educational, and relevant.
Strengthens its community through assisting donors, making grants, and providing leadership.
The california film institute celebrates film and videos as art and education. its goal is to present and support emerging and established independent filmakers whose works address issues relevant to contemporary society. this is…
Protect the scenic, natural, cultural, agricultural and open landscapes of sonoma county for the benefit of the community and future generations by developing long-term land protection strategies; (continued on schedule o) promoting…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Napa Valley Festival Association and the most unlike its peers is Common Goal Fund. 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 29 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) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 68 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 SONOMA VALLEY HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SONOMA VALLEY VINTNERS & GROWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR URBAN RENEWAL & EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds CURE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds SONOMA VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF SONOMA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SONOMA COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR LIBERTY AND AMERICAN GREATNESS ↗
- Who funds Vintage House Multi Purpose Senior Center ↗
- Who funds Pacific Legal Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE ATLAS SOCIETY LTD ↗
- Who funds HIPPO LIFE ↗
- Who funds SONOMA COUNTY VINTNERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VALLEY OF THE MOON NATURAL HISTORY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MENTORING ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds THE FUND FOR AMERICAN STUDIES ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN'S TOUCH INC ↗
- Who funds The George Washington University ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR TEACHING ECONOMICS ↗
- Who funds THE HEARTLAND INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION 36 INC ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Sebastiani Theatre Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds KA'OHANA O KALAUPAPA ↗
- Who funds THE UC DAVIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN STATE SALMON ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty ↗
- Who funds NAPA VALLEY FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
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: Sonoma County Community Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · McNabb Foundation · Simon Blattner Family Foundation · The Vadasz Family Foundation · Sanderson Family Foundation · Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Foundation · Khr McNeely Family Foundation · Clay Foundation - West · Kakatu Foundation Inc · Women Giving as One Inc · The Scott Family Fund
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 Christopher Bunting 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.
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How do I get to John Christopher Bunting Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John Christopher Bunting 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.