How much did Lowell Berry Foundation grant in FY2024?

A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 49% of Lowell Berry Foundation’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.

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

2018

studentlearningspecialchristiansafetransitionalscouts

2019

cancersocialfostermentoringrecreationreligiouschristian

2020

diocese oaklandfood banksocialdignityfellowshipcrisisreligious

2021

catholicspecialchildrensocialsafefreedomdept

2022

changenavy sealsfood banksocialcrisisfreedomsafe

2023

educationalmoragachangenavy sealsbanksocialopen

Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.

03FY2024 · 132 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k103 grants · $438k
$10k–50k21 grants · $432k
$50k–250k8 grants · $779k

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$34M

Total assets

Largest grants

The Bay Area Urban Network$175,200
Fuller Theological Seminary$160,000
School of Urban Missions$126,230
City Team Ministries$81,600
WellSpring$73,000
The Leadership Connection$60,000
Hawaiian Islands Ministries$53,000
Young Life - Diablo Valley$50,000
Harbor House Ministries Inc$45,600
Joni & Friends - SF Bay Area$45,000
Intervarsity Christian Fellowship$40,000
Faith Network of the East Bay Inc$40,000
Family Aid Catholic Education$40,000
Bay Area Rescue Mission$33,100
Stanford University$29,000

02The need

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 (FY17–24, $1.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10% — the area typically sits at 9%. 82% 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.

95%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$12M · 217 repeat orgs$630k to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +39% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.

217 repeat relationships — 109 still active in FY2024, 108 since wound down; 23 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

217

106

Total granted

$12M

$554k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+39%

+31%

Still filing today

55%

45%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $77k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Human ServicesEducationHealthYouth DevelopmentReligionArts & CultureOther

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

TB
The Bay Area Urban Network
8× · 2017–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +59% · 38% of their budget
FT
Fuller Theological Seminary
8× · 2017–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +9%
W
WellSpring
8× · 2017–2024 · $447k · revenue +214%

Funded once

YL
Young Life of Berkeley
one grant, 2017 · $73k
BC
Bayside Church of Placerville
one grant, 2021 · $50k
CF
Chico FourSquare Church
one grant, 2018 · $50k

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.

Unitedly

Unitedly is a nonprofit organization based in San Mateo County, California. Unitedly was established to ensure Asian families and communities have access to equitable opportunities and resources to thrive in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Human Services

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

Contra Costa Crisis Center

The Contra Costa Crisis Center's mission is to keep people in Contra Costa County, California alive and safe, help them through crises, and connect them with culturally relevant resources in the community.

Health

Children's Council of San Francisco

Since 1974, Children's Council has been at the heart of early care and education in San Francisco.

Human Services

California Competes

California Competes: Higher Education for a Strong Economy is a nonpartisan policy and research organization focused on identifying solutions to the states most critical challenges at the intersection of higher education, equity, and the…

Education

Oakland Kids First

Oakland Kids First is a community-based nonprofit in Oakland, CA that empowers young people to reimagine broken systems and organize for equitable public schools by providing youth leadership development, youth organizing, and community…

Youth Development

San Francisco Casa

San Francisco CASA (formerly San Francisco Court Appointed Special Advocates) transforms the lives of systems-involved and other vulnerable children, young adults and their families by providing consistent, caring volunteer advocates…

Civil Rights

Bay Area Organizing Committee

A broad based network of local institutions - congregations, synagogues, non-profits and civic associations - that serve as a foundation for public relationships, leadership development and action around issues that affect our communities.

Unclassified

Refugee & Immigrant Transitions

Our mission is to welcome and partner with those who have sought refuge, employing strengths-based educational approaches and community supports so they may thrive in our shared communities.

Youth Development

Childrens Receiving Home

The Childrens Receiving Home of Sacramento is committed to positively impacting the lives of children, youth, and families affected by abuse, neglect, behavioral health issues, and trauma in California.

—

Empower Work Inc

To create healthy, equitable workplaces where people are valued, supported, and empowered in ways that support their economic mobility, emotional well-being, and career success through (1) Direct Service, (2) Training and Community, and 3)…

Employment

Challenge Success

Challenge Success partners with schools, families, and communities to embrace a broad definition of success and implement research-based strategies that promote student well-being and engagement with learning.

Education

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Teen Challenge of East Bay Inc and the most unlike its peers is Convoy of Hope. 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 28 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 10% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

2%4/208

the rest of the field

10%

5,127/50,099

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.

05the grantee network

191 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

178/191

Grantees still filing

136/191

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$6,638,736Human Services$2,244,120Education$1,809,667Religion$1,381,770Community Improvement$336,600Youth Development$221,458Crime & Legal$201,225

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.

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.

East Bay Community FoundationCA70× affinity49 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: East Bay Community Foundation · Bernard E & Alba Witkin Charitable · The San Francisco Foundation · Dean and Margaret Lesher Foundation · San Jose Mercury News Wish Book Fund Inc · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · West Davis & Bergard Foundation · The Barrios Trust · Sunlight Giving · The Morris Stulsaft Foundation · The Joseph and Vera Long Foundation · Quest 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 organisation Lowell Berry 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.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

4get no government money at all

0rely on government for over half their income

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: Pillars of Hope Inc.

Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk

Financial management

insufficient risk

Limited financial data in public filings.

Track record & reputation

low risk

8 years of Form 990 filings, still active.

Legal standing

low risk

US 501(c)(3); EIN 273832943 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 Pillars of Hope Inc, 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

Awaiting reportFinancial stability— Runway not derivable from filings.
On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue contracted over the period.
WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 48% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
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 Lowell Berry Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Lowell Berry Foundation 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.

Lowell Berry Foundation

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

191 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to Lowell Berry Foundation?

More from the funding graph

Lowell Berry Foundation

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

191 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to Lowell Berry Foundation?

More from the funding graph