· Private foundation
Melvin Garb 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–50k3 grants · $70k
- $50k–250k18 grants · $1.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE | $200,000 |
| TEMPLE SOLEL | $180,000 |
| TEMPLE ISRAEL OF HOLLYWOOD | $175,000 |
| HILLEL OF SAN DIEGO | $150,000 |
| IMPACT CUBED | $100,000 |
| ADL | $100,000 |
| TURNOUT ACTIVISM | $100,000 |
| JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| SEACREST FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE | $95,000 |
| LEAP TO SUCCESS | $75,000 |
| DIABETES RESEARCH CONNECTION | $65,000 |
| VEHICLES FOR CHANGE - SAN DIEGO | $60,000 |
| JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF SAN DIEGO | $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 (FY17–24, $1.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +50% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 7 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, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $520k 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
- LTLeap to Success8× · 2017–2024 · $555k · revenue +114%
- SFSEACREST FOUNDATION6× · 2019–2024 · $506k · revenue +132%
- DRDIABETES RESEARCH CONNECTION7× · 2017–2024 · $420k · revenue +25%
Funded once
- TATHE ARC OF SAN DIEGOone grant, 2019 · $60k · revenue +12%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $50k
- TBTEMPLE BETH SHALOMone grant, 2019 · $50k
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.
San Diego Jewish Academy empowers each student to learn for life, guided by Jewish values and rooted in strength of community.
Jewish federation of san diego county is dedicated to building a vibrant, caring, connected, and enduring jewish community.
Jewish family service is a client-centered, impact-driven organization working to build a stronger, healthier, more resilient san diego.
To create an informed, celebratory and satisfying jewish community for students at the university of southern california, to deepen jewish identity through social, intellectual and spiritual participation, to offer diversified…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
On a mission to connect every person facing hunger with nutritious meals by maximizing food rescue. through direct service and community partnerships, feeding san diego provides more than 26 million meals each year to children, families,…
San diego center for jewish culture ("cjc") is a california 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that was incorporated in january 1999. cjc is housed at lawrence family jewish community centers of san diego county. cjc provides a wide…
San diego hunger coalition works collaboratively with community partners to create equitable access to food assistance through research, education, and advocacy.
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 shalom hartman institute (shi) is a leading research and educational center serving israel and world jewry. we work to enrich the moral and spiritual life of israel and the jewish people, deepen the commitment to pluralism and israel's…
The jewish association for community living responds to the needs of persons with developmental disabilities and their families in our community by providing quality support and services enhanced by jewish tradition.
the organization was created to operate a high school serving the Jewish community of San Diego. Our mission is to prepare individuals for a lifetime of learning, spiritual growth, and community responsibility as Jews. Our goal is to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank and the most unlike its peers is Circle Tlc Ranch Inc. 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 28 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 56 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 The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds IMPACT CUBED ↗
- Who funds Leap to Success ↗
- Who funds SEACREST FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DIABETES RESEARCH CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds HILLEL OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds KITCHENS FOR GOOD ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds JACOBS & CUSHMAN SAN DIEGO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO HEBREW HOMES ↗
- Who funds VEHICLES FOR CHANGE SAN DIEGO INC ↗
- Who funds TURNOUT ACTIVISM INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds The Butterfly Project ↗
- Who funds MAMA'S KITCHEN ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE ARC OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds ASELTINE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds RANCHO SANTA FE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Burn Institute ↗
- Who funds Sunbird Initiative ↗
- Who funds Circle TLC Ranch Inc ↗
- Who funds WOMENS RESOURCE CENTER ↗
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: The San Diego Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · David C Copley Foundation · Stern Leichter Foundation · Leichtag Foundation · The Cushman Foundation · Sempra Foundation · Boys and Girls Aid Society of San Diego Ltd · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · The Country Friends · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · The Nordson Corporation 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 Melvin Garb 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 Melvin Garb Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Melvin Garb 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.