Skip to content
Plinth

· Private foundation

Morrison Institute for Decentralism

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.

$12k
Granted FY2025still arriving
6
Grants FY2025still arriving
1
States reached
$10k
Largest
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20242025.

Arts & Culture$10kEnvironment$3kFood & Nutrition$2kHealth$2kPhilanthropy$504Human Services$500Community Improvement$258Crime & Legal$250
02FY2025 · 6 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k5 grants · $2k
  • $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
$500
Median grant
1
States reached
$54k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
ART OF ELYSIUM$10,000
SANTA BARBARA BIRTH CENTER$1,000
FOUNDATION FOR LIVING BEAUTY$500
ONE THREAD COLLECTIVE$258
CASA OF SANTA BARABARA COUNTY$250
UNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY$100
02The need
03

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:

Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY24–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%ART OF ELYSIUM: $10k → 14%SANTA BARBARA BIRTH CENTER: $1k → 14%NATIONAL CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION: $250 → 13%TWIN HEARTS: $2k → 12%PROJECT BIOME INC: $267 → 8%FOUNDATION FOR LIVING BEAUTY: $500 → 14%ONE THREAD COLLECTIVE: $258 → 14%CASA OF SANTA BARABARA COUNTY: $250 → 14%CALM INC: $500 → 14%COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL: $450 → 14%UNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY INC: $154 → 14%GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND: $2k → 14%UNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY: $100 → 14%0%20%40%50%more need →
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 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.

03Your 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.

1
The Climate Center

The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.

Education
2
Charlotte Maxwell Clinic

To provide San Francisco Bay Area low-income women with cancer the opportunity for improved health outcomes and quality of life by providing free access to compassionate, integrative care and wrap-around support.

Unclassified
3
Northern Santa Barbara County United Way

Nsbcuw is organized to improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities in northern santa barbara county, california. nsbcuw works with individuals and organizations to identify and resolve pressing community issues through its…

Philanthropy
4
Santa Barbara Foundation

The mission of the santa barbara foundation (sbf) is to mobilize collective wisdom and philanthropic capital to build empathetic, inclusive and resilient communities.

Philanthropy
5
Womens Cancer Resource Center

The Womens Cancer Resource Center improves equitable access to cancer information, support and care.

Unclassified
6
Banyan Tree Women's Collective

Banyan Tree Women's Collective is dedicated to improving access to holistic health and wellness services for all. Serving the San Francisco Bay Area Peninsula and beyond, we offer expert-led programs in nutrition, movement, spirit, and…

7
The Birth Center

The birth center dba lifecycle wellness and birth center is an independent non-profit organization and free-standing, out-of-hospital birth center. our team of midwives and nurse-practitioners provide empowering gynecology and…

8
Fund for Santa Barbara Inc

Provide cash grants and free consulting to grassroots organizations in santa barbara county.

Philanthropy
9
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

To conserve native plants and habitats for the health and well-being of people and our planet.

Environment
10
Origins Council

Origins council is dedicated to sustainable rural economic development within cannabis producing regions, and establishing nationally and internationally recognized, legally defensible, standards-based, geographic indication systems for…

Public Benefit
11
Sustainable Conservation

Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…

Environment
12
Work on Climate

Supporting industry transformation towards climate-positive and make green careers transitions and driving the adoption of green workforce development practices broadly.

Environment

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Environmental Council and the most unlike its peers is One Thread Collective. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

10 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 10 of the 12 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
10/10
Grantees still filing
4/10
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

THE ART OF ELYSIUM — $10,000 · Arts & CultureTHE ART OF ELYSIUMGANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND — $2,400 · OtherGANNA WALSKA LOTUSLANDTWIN HEARTS — $2,000 · OtherTWIN HEARTSCASA OF SANTA BARABARA COUNTY — $250 · OtherCASA OF SANTA BARABARA COUNTYTHE SANTA BARBARA BIRTH CENTER — $1,000 · HealthTHE SANTA…THE FOUNDATION FOR LIVING BEAUTY DBA LIVING BEAUTY CANCER FOUNDATION — $500 · HealthTHE FOUND…UNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY INC — $254 · PhilanthropyNATIONAL CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION INC — $250 · PhilanthropyCALM INC — $500 · Crime & LegalCOMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL — $450 · EnvironmentPROJECT BIOME INC — $267 · Food & NutritionONE THREAD COLLECTIVE — $258 · International
Arts & Culture$10,000Other$4,650Health$1,500Philanthropy$504Crime & Legal$500Environment$450Food & Nutrition$267International$258

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetGANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND — $2,400 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCALM INC — $500 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetCOMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL — $450 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetPROJECT BIOME INC — $267 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetONE THREAD COLLECTIVE — $258 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetUNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY INC — $254 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetNATIONAL CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION INC — $250 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
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.

The Desantis FoundationCA13.6× affinity4 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Desantis Foundation · Tony and Kyra Rogers Foundation · The Little One Foundation · Towbes Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · Santa Barbara Foundation · California Community Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund

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 Morrison Institute for Decentralism 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
202122232425
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%your share of their income ↑0%13%25%38%50%share of the org’s income from government
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    3report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–50%
    typical government reliance, FY2025

    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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 12 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    More from the funding graph