· Private foundation
Michael J Femino 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $56k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $294k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Trojan Sig Foundation | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $31,500 |
| Polytechnic School | $30,000 |
| St Judes Childrens Rsch Hosp | $30,000 |
| Newport Beach Public Library Foundation | $25,000 |
| CHOC Foundation | $20,000 |
| Ronald McDonald Family House OC | $20,000 |
| Orangewood Foundation | $17,000 |
| Baby to Baby | $10,000 |
| TGR Foundation | $10,000 |
| Meals on Wheels OC | $10,000 |
| Huntington Medical Research Institute | $10,000 |
| San Gabriel Cemetery Association | $10,000 |
| Make-A-Wish America | $10,000 |
| Newport Coast Elementry SchoolFoundation | $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 (FY20–25, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +18% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 21 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 41% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $231k 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
- CFCHOC FOUNDATION5× · 2021–2025 · $50k · revenue +57%
- PSPOLYTECHNIC SCHOOL5× · 2021–2025 · $39k · revenue +47%
- CHChildren's Hospital Los Angeles5× · 2020–2025 · $27k · revenue +27%
Funded once
- LMLas Madrinas Foundationone grant, 2021 · $5k
- UMUSC Marshall School Entrepreneur Prone grant, 2022 · $5k
- UBUSC Business School Entrepreneur Prone grant, 2021 · $5k
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 uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
The ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
Santa Barbara Education Foundation (SBEF) provides and supports programs that enrich the academic, artistic, and personal development of all students in the Santa Barbara Unified School District.
Our mission is to support the naval postgraduate school by providing funding and programmatic support for education, research, technology development, institutional initiatives, and community programs that advance national security and…
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.
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
Pitzer College produces engaged socially responsible citizens of the world through an academically rigorous, interdisciplinary liberal arts education emphasizing social justice, intercultural understanding and environmental sensitivity.…
The mission of the silicon schools fund is to improve education through supporting the launch of excellent new schools, improving academic instruction in existing schools, and by funding some of the boldest innovations in education…
Serves the mission of the university by supporting and engaging in research, entrepreneurship, community service, sponsored programs and the acquisition of private resources.
The mission of the university of california, irvine foundation (uc irvine foundation) is to raise and manage private funds to support uc irvine's broader mission of excellence in teaching, research and public service. to this end, the uc…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
To support and further the research, education and community service objectives of san diego state university.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Tiger Woods Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is San Gabriel Cemetery Association. 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 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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 47 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 Trojan Sig Foundation ↗
- Who funds CHOC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Los Angeles ↗
- Who funds NEWPORT BEACH PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CRYSTAL COVE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds HUNTINGTON MEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTES ↗
- Who funds SWIM WITH MIKE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Pasadena Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds TIGER WOODS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Newport Coast Elementary School Foundation ↗
- Who funds Sigma Chi Foundation ↗
- Who funds SAN GABRIEL CEMETERY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BABY2BABY ↗
- Who funds AFS-USA INC ↗
- Who funds ST JOSEPH CENTER ↗
- Who funds Newport Beach Fire Department Foundation ↗
- Who funds NEWPORT BEACH BASEBALL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds LAGUNA FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA CATALINA ISLAND CONSERVANCY ↗
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: Pasadena Community Foundation · California Community Foundation · Orange County Community Foundation · The Confidence Foundation · Sempra Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc
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 Michael J Femino 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 Michael J Femino Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Michael J Femino 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.