· Private foundation
La Centra-Sumerlin 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k28 grants · $511k
- $50k–250k16 grants · $1.4M
- $250k+2 grants · $657k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FAMILY SERVICE AGENCY | $366,839 |
| CARPINTERIA CHILDREN'S PROJECT | $290,000 |
| LAND TRUST OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY | $240,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $133,400 |
| CARPINTERIA EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $126,500 |
| SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION | $125,000 |
| INDEPENDENT LIVING RESCUE CENTER | $108,000 |
| CARPINTERIA COMMUNITY THEATRE INC | $100,000 |
| FOODBANK OF SANTA BARBARA | $70,000 |
| CANCER FOUNDATION OF SANTA BARBARA | $50,000 |
| VNA HEALTH | $50,000 |
| PATH SANTA BARBARA (CASA ESPERANZA) | $50,000 |
| HOSPICE OF SANTA BARBARA | $50,000 |
| GIRLS INC OF CARPINTERIA | $50,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA NEIGHBORHOOD CLINICS | $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 (FY18–24, $72k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 42% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +56% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
76 repeat relationships — 36 still active in FY2024, 40 since wound down; 9 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; $264k 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
- FOFoodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $3.6M · revenue +76%
UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION2× · 2021–2022 · $3.0M · revenue +176%- CCCARPINTERIA CHILDREN'S PROJECT8× · 2017–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +90%
Funded once
- MWMAKING WAVES FOUNDATION INC AKA MAKING WAVES EDUCATION FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $400k · revenue +53%
- URUC REGENTSone grant, 2022 · $380k
- DDIGNITYMOVESgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $200k · revenue ×11
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.
Independent nonpartisan newsroom serving Santa Cruz County, California we are all watching and engaged in our local government, our needs are addressed, democracy works better and our community is stronger.
The mission of st. francis foundation of santa barbara is to promote and support health care.
To provide high-quality civil legal services to vulnerable santa barbara county residents.
Our mission is to protect public trail access build and maintain safe and sustainable trails and promote public engagement in land stewardship and trail use for all types of outdoor recreation.
At Just Communities we work to ensure that Central Coast schools, organizations, and communities are places of opportunity, not places of limitation. We advance justice by engaging our community in leadership development, dialogue, action…
The organization was established to protect and restore the santa barbara channel and its watersheds through science-based advocacy, education, field work, community engagement, and citizen enforcement of environmental laws.
The budget center provides dependable, timely, policy guidance and public education through our independent research and analysis, public education, strategic collaborations, and communications to expand economic opportunities and promote…
New house dedicates itself to providing a clean and sober, healthy environment that allows men with alcohol and other drug problems to begin their journey of recovery and to reclaim their dignity, self-esteem, and sense of purpose. new…
The santa barbara public library foundation supports the long-term health and sustainability of the santa barbara public library through public-private partnerships.
Nsbcuw is organized to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities in northern santa barbara county, california. nsbcuw works with individuals and organizations to identify and resolve pressing community issues through its…
Southern california grantmakers (scg) is the regional association for philanthropists and grantmakers working to make a difference in our communities and around the world. we are a leadership hub for our members to connect with each other,…
To operate a school for grades 6-9, delivering a holistic program of academics, arts & athletics, community service, and outdoor education that fosters passion for life and learning, self trust, strength and courage to succeed, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Santa Barbara Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Small Town Art Publications. 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 41 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
69 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. 69 of the 109 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 Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CARPINTERIA CHILDREN'S PROJECT ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE LAND TRUST FOR SANTA BARBARA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds MAKING WAVES FOUNDATION INC AKA MAKING WAVES EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF CARPINTERIA ↗
- Who funds SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds Carpinteria Education Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds CANCER FOUNDATION OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA WILDLIFE CARE NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CARPINTERIA LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA NEIGHBORHOOD CLINICS ↗
- Who funds DIGNITYMOVES ↗
- Who funds CALM INC ↗
- Who funds SANSUM CLINIC ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF SANTA BARBARA INC ↗
- Who funds CARPINTERIA COMMUNITY THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds Access Central Coast formerly Independent Living Resource Ctr ↗
- Who funds Sansum Diabetes Research Institute ↗
- Who funds VNA HEALTH ↗
- Who funds Wilderness Youth Project Inc ↗
- Who funds TRANSITION HOUSE ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA ZOOLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR SANTA BARBARA CITY COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE'S SELF HELP HOUSING CORP ↗
- Who funds ORGANIC SOUP KITCHEN ↗
- Who funds LEAP 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: Santa Barbara Foundation · Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Ann Jackson Family Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · June G Outhwaite Charitable Trust JS Poucher KL Englert & CM Cooney Co-Tr · Towbes Foundation · Mosher Foundation · The John C Mithun Foundation · Alice Tweed Tuohy Foundation · Bull Henry W Foundation · James S Bower Foundation · The Wood-Claeyssens 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 La Centra-Sumerlin 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 La Centra-Sumerlin Foundation?
Find your warmest path to La Centra-Sumerlin 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.