· Private foundation
Johnny Carson 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 $10k34 grants · $161k
- $10k–50k180 grants · $3.6M
- $50k–250k40 grants · $3.7M
- $250k+5 grants · $5.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION | $4,545,000 |
| FAITH REGIONAL HEALTH SERVICES FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| LA REGIONAL FOOD BANK | $330,000 |
| HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES | $290,000 |
| UC REGENTS | $250,000 |
| WESTSIDE FOOD BANK | $230,000 |
| NEBRASKA CULTURAL ENDOWMENT | $200,000 |
| ALLIANCE FOR COLLEGE READY PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $190,000 |
| PAT TILLMAN FOUNDATION | $155,000 |
| TEACH FOR AMERICA | $155,000 |
| NATIONAL JEWISH HEALTH | $155,000 |
| UCLA FOUNDATION | $155,000 |
| MOTION PICTURE & TELEVISION FUND | $125,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD LA | $125,000 |
| HEART OF LOS ANGELES | $115,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $6.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 92% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 39% of Johnny Carson 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. Read by recipient address, 51% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 88% — more of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +35% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
301 repeat relationships — 236 still active in FY2025, 65 since wound down; 19 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $342k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $34M · revenue +70%
- LALOS ANGELES REGIONAL FOOD BANK9× · 2017–2025 · $2.6M · revenue +205%
HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES9× · 2017–2025 · $2.6M · revenue +175%
Funded once
- NFNorth Fork Area Transit Incone grant, 2023 · $500k · revenue -53%
- TAThe Arc of Norfolkone grant, 2017 · $180k · revenue -22%
- USUSC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTSone grant, 2018 · $125k
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 association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
La's best provides free supervised before and after-school activities to over 15,000 children at 200 schools in los angeles unified school district (lausd).
To surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life. we work with public school systems, establishing relationship with superintendents, principals, educators, and community partners to…
To distribute public affairs and other educational information in order to create an electronic bridge between californians and their public officials, and, in the process educate a new generation of voting citizens and civic leaders who…
The foundation's mission is to improve the oral health of all californians by supporting the dental profession and its efforts to meet community needs.
Chamber's mission: design and advance opportunities and solutions for a thriving regional economy that are inclusive and globally competitive. 1) advocacy - be a bold advocate for business as a driver of a strong economy that enables…
The Television Academy is dedicated to celebrating excellence, innovation and the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences through recognition, education and leadership, while fostering a diverse, inclusive and accessible…
The la conservation corps creates equitable opportunities for young people to build resilience in themselves, their communities and the environment through a program of work, education and support.
The california dental association is committed to the success of our members in service to their patients and the public.
To advance educational equity. together with families, schools and the community, facilitate access to and opportunities for quality educational and wellness practices so that children thrive from diapers to diplomas.
The organization is a non-partisan, membership based speakers' forum that connects business leaders, community members, and engaged individuals with shared interest in local, national, and global affairs. it provides an open and accessible…
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children's Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is National Organization of Minority Architects. 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 32 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1.0% 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.
308 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 308 of the 422 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FAITH REGIONAL HEALTH SERVICES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES REGIONAL FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES ↗
- Who funds WESTSIDE FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds THE LOS ANGELES FREE CLINIC ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR COLLEGE-READY PUBLIC SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Chrysalis Foundation ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MOTION PICTURE AND TELEVISION FUND ↗
- Who funds PAT TILLMAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL JEWISH HEALTH ↗
- Who funds NORFOLK SENIOR CITIZENS CENTER ↗
- Who funds A THOUSAND JOYS INC ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA CULTURAL ENDOWMENT ↗
- Who funds HEART OF LOS ANGELES YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ANGEL FOOD ↗
- Who funds Children of the Night ↗
- Who funds SCREEN ACTORS GUILD-AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TELEVISION AND RADIO ARTISTS FOUND ↗
- Who funds MARTIN LUTHER KING JR COMMUNITY HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE GHETTO FILM SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL COMEDY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds North Fork Area Transit Inc ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE TRACK ↗
- Who funds JEWISH BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS ASSOCIATION OF LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds One Voice ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER LOS ANGELES ZOOLOGICAL 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: The Ralph M Parsons Foundation · The Rose Hills Foundation · Weingart Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · California Community Foundation · The Ahmanson Foundation · Joseph Drown Foundation · Elbridge Stuart Foundation Dba Stuart Foundation · The Green Foundation · S Mark Taper Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · Great Public Schools Now
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 Johnny Carson 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.
- Steampark Inc — 24% of income from government
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Reach Out and Read Inc — 9% of income from government
- Year Up Inc — 0% of income from government
- The Aleph Institute 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 Johnny Carson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Johnny Carson 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.