· Private foundation
Kerr Family 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 $10k18 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $44k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOME OF GUIDING HANDS CORPORATION | $24,000 |
| VISION OF CHILDREN | $10,000 |
| THEATRE & ARTS FOUNDATION OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY | $10,000 |
| VAPA FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| OLD GLOBE THEATRE | $5,000 |
| THEATRE & ARTS FOUNDATION OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY | $5,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR ANIMAL CARE AND EDUCATION | $4,400 |
| INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $4,000 |
| SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION | $4,000 |
| GLOBAL SANCTUARY FOR ELEPHANTS | $2,000 |
| GLOBAL SANCTUARY FOR ELEPHANTS | $2,000 |
| VISION OF CHILDREN | $1,500 |
| PERFORMING ANIMAL WELFARE SOCIETY | $1,500 |
| THE COUNTRY FRIENDS INC | $1,500 |
| SAN DIEGO AUTOMOTIVE MUSEUM INC | $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 (FY17–25, $177k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
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 +44% since the first grant, against +9% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 14 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k 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
- HOHOME OF GUIDING HANDS CORPORATION8× · 2017–2025 · $139k · revenue +74%
- PAPERFORMING ANIMAL WELFARE SOCIETY8× · 2017–2025 · $53k · revenue +118%
- FDFREEDOM DOGS6× · 2017–2023 · $22k · revenue +90%
Funded once
- SDSan Diego Opera Associationone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue -15%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER SAN DIEGOone grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue -2%
- MOMUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGOone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue -90%
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.
Acquire, manage and protect land in perpetuity that supports sensitive habitats and species, and to educate and inspire people and communities as stewards and advocates of their natural environment.
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
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.
SPOT Saving Pets One at a Time is a leading San Diego County all-volunteer rescue organization whose main focus is to save dogs and cats in shelters who are at risk of euthanization and to help other dogs and cats in need as well. In…
Inactive
Balboa Park Conservancy (the Conservancy) was organized on November 3, 1923. The Conservancy is the City of San Diegos (the City) partner and advocated for the greater good of Balboa Park (the Park). The Conservancy collaborated with and…
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.
Conserving nature through science and discovery.
The santa barbara zoo is dedicated to the preservation, conservation, and enhancement of the natural world and its living treasures through education, research, recreation and conservation.
To support and further the research, education and community service objectives of san diego state university.
To connect all people with wildlife, inspire caring for nature, and advance conservation action.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ronald Mcdonald House Charities of San Diego Inc and the most unlike its peers is Captain Paul Watson Foundation. 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 27 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
61 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. 61 of the 65 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 HOME OF GUIDING HANDS CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE CAMPANILE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PERFORMING ANIMAL WELFARE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM DOGS ↗
- Who funds OLD GLOBE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds THE SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds The Vision of Children ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds THE COUNTRY FRIENDS ↗
- Who funds THEATER & ARTS FOUNDATION OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY DBA LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR ANIMAL CARE & EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds San Diego Opera Association ↗
- Who funds CUREBOUND ↗
- Who funds VISIONS GLOBAL EMPOWERMENT ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL SANCTUARY FOR ELEPHANTS ↗
- Who funds PROMISES2KIDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VAPA Foundation ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO CENTER FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds THE NEW CHILDRENS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Rancho Santa Fe Tea 3 Foundation ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds The Abraham Foundation ↗
- Who funds SPAY-NEUTER ACTION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds CHARLEY HOFFMAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MIRACLE BABIES ↗
- Who funds IMMUNOTHERAPY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHELTER TO SOLDIER INC ↗
- Who funds PATRONS OF THE PRADO ↗
- Who funds THE ELEPHANT SANCTUARY IN TENNESSEE ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO POLICE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JUST LIKE MY CHILD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LIONS TIGERS AND BEARS ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF SAN DIEGO INC ↗
- Who funds The Salk Institute for Biological Studies ↗
- Who funds Operation Game On ↗
- Who funds THRIVE ANIMAL RESCUE INC ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds Torrey Pines High School Foundation Inc ↗
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 Diego Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · Sempra Foundation · David C Copley Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · The Cushman Foundation · The Conrad Prebys Foundation · French Fund Samuel Katherine Tua · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · The Parker Foundation · Samuel I & John Henry Fox 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 Kerr Family 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 Kerr Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Kerr Family 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.