· Private foundation
Mills 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 $10k8 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $38k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CARLE CTR FOR PHILANTHROPY | $25,000 |
| READING LEGACIES | $13,000 |
| SAN DIEGO HUMANE SOCIETY | $6,500 |
| ACCESS YOUTH ACADEMY | $5,000 |
| TRANSCENDANCE | $4,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| GRASS ROOTS AID PARNERSHIP | $2,500 |
| LUV WORKS | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| YMCA | $525 |
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 (FY23–24, $2k) 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.
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.
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.
13 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 4 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k 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
- PRPeoria Riverfront Museum4× · 2021–2024 · $54k · revenue +503%
- RLREADING LEGACIES4× · 2021–2025 · $19k · revenue +27%
- AYACCESS YOUTH ACADEMY6× · 2020–2025 · $18k · revenue +68%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $10k
- CKCATHRINE KLINGLE MEMORIAL FUNDone grant, 2023 · $10k
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBone 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.
Changing worlds' mission is to foster inclusive communities through oral history, writing and arts programs that improve student learning, affirm identity and enhance cross-cultural understanding.
To educate california youth about the operations of local, state, and federal government.
All children need a childhood. Allies for Every Child brings together and strengthens families, cultivating conditions for children to succeed in life. (Continues on Schedule O)
Mission: to cultivate the next generation of urban conservationists in richmond, virginia. vision: groundwork rva works with richmond youth to increase environmental, economic, and social well-being in neighborhoods by transforming…
The California School-Age Consortium (CalSAC) builds professional networks that provide training, leadership development and advocacy to ensure that all young people have access to high quality out-of-school time programs and to create a…
The mission of the arc san francisco is to transform the lives of adults with developmental disabilities by advancing lifelong learning, personal achievement, and independence.
The mission of dc bilingual public charter school is to create a learning community that ensures high academic achievement for all students in both spanish and english, develops leadership, and values all cultures.
PPS-SF's mission is to promote the fundamental value of public education and pursue the success of every public school by sharing knowledge, bridging communities, and informing policy.
In 2024 our Alternative Education Pathways Program provided families with a safe, nurturing, family-friendly workspace that combined project-based learning, peer-to-peer mentoring, and a community garden where participants identified 40…
Svyca empowers teens and young adults to combat climate change immediately through impactful education and policy initiatives. our youth work in focused climate action teams to ensure important climate policies and measures receive support…
Our mission is to empower youth to become global change-makers with the knowledge, confidence and empathy to make a positive impact in their world. We envision a just and inclusive world in which empathy, care and social engagement are at…
The mission of the fort bend children's discovery center is to transform communities through innovative, child-centered learning.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Vehicles for Change Inc and the most unlike its peers is San Diego Humane Society and Spca. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 28 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.
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 · Mills Family Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Mills 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.
- Vehicles for Change Inc — 16% 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 Mills Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Mills 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.