· Private foundation
Lily Lai 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
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $320k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| California CASA Association | $150,000 |
| Voices for Children | $100,000 |
| UC San Diego Foundation | $100,000 |
| Feeding San Diego | $100,000 |
| Library Foundation SD | $100,000 |
| Salk Institute | $100,000 |
| Focusing Philanthorpy | $100,000 |
| YWCA of San Diego County | $70,000 |
| Casa de Amparo | $60,000 |
| Just in Time for Foster Youth | $50,000 |
| A Reason to Survive | $50,000 |
| Focusing Philanthropy | $50,000 |
| Ocean Discovery Institute | $50,000 |
| Promises2Kids | $40,000 |
| Monarch School Project | $40,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.4M) 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.
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.
27 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- USUC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $890k · revenue +78%
- FPFOCUSING PHILANTHROPY INC6× · 2017–2024 · $635k · revenue +15%
- CCCALIFORNIA COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATE ASSOCIATION7× · 2018–2024 · $615k · revenue ×26
Funded once
- FAFeeding America San Diegoone grant, 2017 · $60k
- COCLASSROOM OF THE FUTURE FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $1k · revenue +117%
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 san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
The policy & innovation center's (pic) mission is to unlock the region's potential by cultivating and building partnerships. our niche is to address intractable issues that can only be solved with cross-sector, multi-jurisdictional…
To partner with youth, families, adults and communities to reach their full potential and is achieved through comprehensive and integrated programming in the areas of child and youth development; youth, adult and family wellness and…
San Diego Jewish Academy empowers each student to learn for life, guided by Jewish values and rooted in strength of community.
The New Childrens Museum (the Museum) in San Diego is an arts-based childrens museum whose mission is to stimulate imagination, creativity, and critical thinking in children and families through inventive, engaging experiences with…
Kidworks inspires purpose in youth, fuels their growth, and catalyzes their impact in the community and the world.
The mission of san diego volunteer lawyer program, inc. is to provide equal access to the justice system by serving as a bridge between indigent and other disadvantaged people in san diego county and the volunteer lawyers who are willing…
The purpose of providing legal representation and advocacy to foster children and youth in the San Diego County courts.
To spark breakthrough community action that elevates every child and family toward a brighter future.
At children's day school, what you learn and who you become are equally important. cds is a welcoming community in the big city, a farm and garden among urban streets, an advocate for responsibility to others as well as individual…
San Francisco CASA transforms the lives of children and youth traumatized and displaced in the foster care and related systems by providing one consistent, caring volunteer advocate, trained to address each childs needs in the court and…
San Diego Junior Theatre (Junior Theatre) was incorporated in 1948 as a nonprofit corporation and is the oldest youth theatre in the nation, offering affordable camps, classes, and outreach programs for children ages 3-18; as well as six…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Diego Center for Children and the most unlike its peers is San Diego Public Library 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 25 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 29 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 UC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOCUSING PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds YWCA OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FEEDING SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds Casa De Amparo ↗
- Who funds VOICES FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds A Reason To Survive ↗
- Who funds MONARCH SCHOOL PROJECT ↗
- Who funds PROMISES2KIDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JUST IN TIME FOR FOSTER YOUTH ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO CENTER FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds WOMENS RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds KITCHENS FOR GOOD ↗
- Who funds COMPUTERS 2 SD KIDS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds OCEAN DISCOVERY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO CHILDREN'S DISCOVERY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds transcenDANCE Youth Arts Project ↗
- Who funds REALITY CHANGERS ↗
- Who funds CENTURY CLUB OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds A BRIDGE FOR KIDS ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S ALOPECIA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Doors of Change ↗
- Who funds CLASSROOM OF THE FUTURE FOUNDATION ↗
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: Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · David C Copley Foundation · The San Diego Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Sempra Foundation · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · The Nordson Corporation Foundation · McCarthy Family Foundation Inc · Boys and Girls Aid Society of San Diego Ltd · The Conrad Prebys Foundation · The Parker Foundation · The Cushman 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 Lily Lai 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 Lily Lai Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Lily Lai 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.