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· Public charity
Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County
To use the law to make the social safety net work for everyone in San Mateo County.
$1.3M
Granted FY2025
10
Grants
1
Communities
$261k
Largest
01What you fund
0183% classified
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2019–2025.
Human Services$1.6MCrime & Legal$1.6MArts & Culture$1.3MCommunity Improvement$950kEducation$501kEmployment$67kHousing & Shelter$5kOther$1.3M
02beneath the categories
Past the labels — and the year it shifted
Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.
…and in their own words, year by year
2019
represent clientsclients removalremoval defensedefense casescases beforebefore immigrationimmigration court
2020
redwoodcoastsidehopepotentialchange
2021
literacyyouthhomelessagingadultscarecyo
2022
researchjobundergraduate graduateliteracyyouthhomelessaging
2023
youthhomelessagingadultscarecyohope
2025
youthhomelessagingadultscarecyohope
Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2025 · 10 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k2 grants · $30k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $866k
- $250k+1 grant · $261k
$124,539
Median grant
1
States reached
$7.3M
Total assets
Largest grants
- Immigration Institute of the Bay Area$260,710
- Catholic Charities$222,554
- Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto$172,958
- University of San Francisco School of Law$124,539
- Pangea Legal Services$124,539
- Faith in Action Bay Area$84,409
- Immigrant Legal Resource Center$74,861
- Nuestra Casa de East Palo Alto$62,455
- Coastside Hope$18,580
- El Concilio of San Mateo County$11,728
02The need
04
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.
show:
Your human-services grants (FY19–25, $1.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 8% — the area typically sits at 7%. 100% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your edge
repeat funding
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.
83%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$6.1M · 14 repeat orgs$1.2M to everyone else
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +61% since the first grant, against +32% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Re-uppedFunded once
Organizations
14
9
Total granted
$6.1M
$1.2M
Median revenue growth · since first grant
+61%
+32%
Still filing today
86%
56%
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k went to new ones.
RenewedFirst-time
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
Human ServicesArts & CultureCrime & LegalEducationEmploymentCommunity ImprovementOther
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
- IIInternational Institute of the Bay Area6× · 2019–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +46%
- CCCatholic Charities4× · 2021–2025 · $885k · revenue +50%
- PLPangea Legal Services6× · 2019–2025 · $613k · revenue +330%
Funded once
- MAMission Asset Fundgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $950k · revenue +31%
- NCNuestra Casaone grant, 2019 · $75k
- APAsian Pacific Islander Legal Outreachone grant, 2019 · $74k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
04Your field
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.
1
Jobs with Justice San Francisco
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
Employment
2
Asian Americans Advancing Justice -
The mission of AAAJ-ALC is to promote, advance, and represent the legal and civil rights of Asian Pacific Islander (API) communities, recognizing that social, economic, political and racial inequalities continue to exist in the United…
Crime & Legal
3
Legal Assistance to the Elderly
LAE's mission is to protect and advance the right of San Franciscos seniors and adults with disabilities to be housed, healthy, financially stable, and safe. We provide free legal services to San Francisco seniors and adults with…
Crime & Legal
4
Law Foundation of Silicon Valley
The mission of the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley ("Law Foundation") is to advance the rights of under-represented individuals and families in our diverse community through legal services, strategic advocacy and educational outreach.
Crime & Legal
5
Jubilee Immigration Advocates
Our mission is to reflect Gods intent for humanity, to live as a reconciled and and restored community. We stand in solidarity with immigrants by providing high quality, affordable immigration legal services and advocating for just…
Human Services
6
La Raza Centro Legal - San Francisco
La Raza Centro Legal San Francisco provides high quality, highly trusted, free legal services to low-income or immigrant clients in the San Francisco Bay Area.
—
7
Southern California Immigration Project
Southern CaliorniaImmigration Project is a public interest nonprofit organization dedicated to providing pro bono and low bono legal services to victims of human and civil rights violations.
International
8
San Francisco Trial Lawyers Assoc
To promote civil justice through education and trial advocacy.
—
9
Centro Legal De La Raza
Centro Legal de la Raza provides bilingual, culturally-sensitive legal aid, education, and advocacy for low-income residents of the bay area, particularly monolingual Spanish-speaking immigrants.
Crime & Legal
10
Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County
To fight social injustice through civil legal advocacy for people living in poverty.
Crime & Legal
11
Casa of San Mateo County
The mission of Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of San Mateo County is to ensure that all children under the protection of the court have a consistent, caring adult who speaks on their behalf and helps them reach their full…
Crime & Legal
12
Collective Legal Services
Legal Aid
Crime & Legal
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Immigrant Legal Resource Center and the most unlike its peers is Coastside Hope. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
05the grantee network
18 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
5
Early backer (in before they grew)
18/18
Grantees still filing
13/18
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Human Services$1,638,418Crime & Legal$1,583,619Arts & Culture$1,332,249Other$1,284,782Community Improvement$950,000Education$500,704Employment$66,750Housing & Shelter$5,000
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 International Institute of the Bay Area ↗
- Who funds Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto ↗
- Who funds Mission Asset Fund ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities ↗
- Who funds Pangea Legal Services ↗
- Who funds University of San Francisco School of Law ↗
- Who funds Faith in Action Bay Area ↗
- Who funds Immigrant Legal Resource Center ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities ↗
- Who funds Nuestra Casa de East Palo Alto ↗
- Who funds Coastside Hope ↗
- Who funds JobTrain Inc ↗
- Who funds Samaritan House ↗
- Who funds Puente de la Costa Sur ↗
- Who funds Bay Area Legal Aid ↗
- Who funds Stanford University ↗
- Who funds El Concilio of San Mateo County ↗
- Who funds San Francisco Tenants Union ↗
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.
The Grove FoundationCA26.8× affinity10 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: The Grove Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Sunlight Giving · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Atkinson Foundation · The Sobrato Family Foundation · Tides Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · Give Forward Foundation · Sand Hill Foundation · Immigrant Legal Resource Center
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 organisation Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County 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.
2024
’20’21’22’23’24
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–25%
typical government reliance, FY20–24
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. 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.
05Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: Pangea Legal Services.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
low risk
~13 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 8 filed years.
Track record & reputation
low risk
8 years of Form 990 filings, still active; revenue up 4.3× since.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 364748424 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on Pangea Legal Services, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- On trackFinancial stability— Roughly 13 months of cash on hand.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue grew over the period.
- On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 8% of their budget — diversified.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County?
Find your warmest path to Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines