· Private foundation
M B Seretean 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
99% of M B Seretean Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 9 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2018, the last year M B Seretean Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 17 organizations, $700k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2018
- Under $10k8 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $250k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $150k
- $250k+1 grant · $277k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CROSSROADS SCHOOL | $277,175 |
| WORLD WILDLIFE FUND | $50,000 |
| EQUITY JUSTICE INSTITUTE | $50,000 |
| CHATTANOOGA GIRLS LEADERSHIP ACADEMY | $50,000 |
| NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR URBAN DEBATE LEAGUES | $25,000 |
| EMORY UNIVERSITY | $25,000 |
| CASA OF LOS ANGELES | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER | $25,000 |
| BET TZEDEK LEGAL SERVICES | $25,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY-CA CHAPTER | $25,000 |
| ONE VOICE | $25,000 |
| SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHATTANOOGA FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND | $10,000 |
| KCRW RADIO NPR AFFILIATE | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $130k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 74% of M B Seretean Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 22% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 17% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
29 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2018, 16 since wound down; 72 grantees were first funded in FY2018 (too recent to call). Read against FY2018, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 47% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- CSCROSSROADS SCHOOL FOR ARTS AND SCIENCES6× · 2017–2023 · $489k · revenue +24%
- CGCHATTANOOGA GIRLS LEADERSHIP ACADEMY2× · 2018–2022 · $125k · revenue +60%
- COCASA OF LOS ANGELES6× · 2017–2023 · $110k · revenue +131%
Funded once
- BHB'NAIR HORIN CHILDREN-FREEDOMone grant, 2017 · $7k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $5k
- AFAMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE ISRAEL SPORT CENTER FOR THE DISABLEDgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +120%
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 union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The Television Academy is dedicated to celebrating excellence, innovation and the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences through recognition, education and leadership, while fostering a diverse, inclusive and accessible…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
To serve the public by producing world-class opera that preserves, promotes and advances the art form while embodying the diversity, spirit and artistic sensibility unique to los angeles. we envision an engaged and enlightened community in…
The mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.
The organization is a non-partisan, membership based speakers' forum that connects business leaders, community members, and engaged individuals with shared interest in local, national, and global affairs. it provides an open and accessible…
The association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
To invest in america's finest artists and illuminate the value of artists to society.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Good Charities 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 32 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
82 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. 82 of the 112 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 GS DONOR ADVISED PHILANTHROPY FUND FOR WEALTH MANAGEMENT INC ↗
- Who funds CROSSROADS SCHOOL FOR ARTS AND SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds CHATTANOOGA GIRLS LEADERSHIP ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds CASA OF LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds One Voice ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR URBAN DEBATE LEAGUES ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds WHITE BUFFALO LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL JUSTICE LEARNING INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds KCRW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds READY TO SUCCEED ↗
- Who funds Universal Community Health Center ↗
- Who funds The Rightway Foundation ↗
- Who funds Emory University ↗
- Who funds KIDSAVE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds EAST TEXAS ANGEL NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds THE ASIA SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CHORDS2CURE CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND ↗
- Who funds STEP UP ON SECOND STREET INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CHATTANOOGA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE RYMAN-CARROLL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GIRLS PREPARATORY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HAROLD ROBINSON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ADVOKIDS ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
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: California Community Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles · The Angell Foundation · The Rose Hills Foundation · The Ahmanson Foundation · The Ralph M Parsons Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Snap Foundation · The Mericos Foundation · Santa Barbara Foundation · Weingart 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 M B Seretean 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- The Trustees of the Smith College — 1% of income from government
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 M B Seretean Foundation?
Find your warmest path to M B Seretean 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.