· Public charity
Parks California
As california state parks' statutory non-profit partner, we have a clear mission - to help strengthen parks and inspire all people to experience these extraordinary places.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k44 grants · $1.3M
- $50k–250k29 grants · $3.3M
- $250k+3 grants · $835k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CITY OF CRESCENT CITY | $300,000 |
| FERNANDEO TATAVIAM BAND OF MISSION INDIANS | $285,192 |
| CITY OF BAKERSFIELD | $250,000 |
| SAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUE | $190,100 |
| FILAM ARTS (THE ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF FILIPINO AMERICAN ARTS & CUL | $180,000 |
| COASTAL CORRIDOR ALLIANCE | $175,000 |
| AMAH MUTSUN LAND TRUST | $150,000 |
| SEMILLAS SOCIEDAD CIVIL (AIUPNA) | $150,000 |
| BEAR YUBA LAND TRUST | $150,000 |
| APAPA (ASIAN PACIFIC ISLANDER AMERICAN PUBLIC AFFAIRS) | $150,000 |
| SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY OFFICE OF EDUCATION | $150,000 |
| CIVICORPS | $149,863 |
| TREEPEOPLE | $149,604 |
| HISPANIC ACCESS FOUNDATION | $147,598 |
| SIERRA NEVADA ALLIANCE | $146,724 |
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 (FY20–24, $370k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Parks California’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, 97% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 93% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +41% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
46 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2024, 21 since wound down; 55 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, 30% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.8M 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
- STSAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUE5× · 2020–2024 · $631k · revenue +64%
- GGGOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVANCY4× · 2021–2024 · $385k · revenue +61%
- CCCRYSTAL COVE CONSERVANCY5× · 2020–2024 · $297k · revenue +59%
Funded once
- PSPLACER SHERIFFS ACTIVITIES LEAGUEone grant, 2023 · $42k · revenue +2% · 73% of their budget
- GFGROWERS FIRST INCone grant, 2023 · $42k · revenue -45%
SIERRA HEALTH FOUNDATION CENTER FOR HEALTH PROGRAM MANAGEMENTone grant, 2023 · $35k · revenue +19%
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.
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…
To protect and sustain the unique lands, waters, and biodiversity of west marin.
Engage.Protect.Enhance.Weareonamissiontobringpeople,water,andnaturetogetherwhilepursuingasustainablerevitalization of the Los Angeles River corridor.
Nature collective's mission is to drive a passion for nature for all. we think inclusively and diversely when serving those devoid of nature those who remember nature and want to connect back to it and those who have an affinity with…
Create and publish educational materials, conduct professional development, promote awareness, and sponsor research on the spectacular biological diversity of the State of CA.
LandPaths' mission is to foster a love of the land in Sonoma County. LandPaths creates ways for people to experience the beauty, understand the value, and assist in healing the land in their local communities.
The California Wilderness Coalition protects the natural landscapes that make California unique, providing clean air and water, a home to wildlife, and a place for recreation and spiritual renewal.
Protect, manage and preserve lands and wildlife having unique natural resources and cultural qualities within and near the foothills of the sierra nevada range.
California Coastkeeper Alliance unites Waterkeeper programs statewide to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
The San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory is dedicated to promote sustainability in the Bay Area and beyond by engaging communities in avian science, habitat restoration, and education.
The Official Partner to the Point Reyes National Seashore Since 1964, Point Reyes National Seashore Association focuses on three priorities: Youth Education & access, environmental conservation and building a broad community for the people…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Mighty Community Advocacy. 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 26 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 6% 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.
114 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. 114 of the 141 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 SAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds FERNANDENO TATAVIAM BAND OF MISSION INDIANS ↗
- Who funds CRYSTAL COVE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Amah Mutsun Land Trust ↗
- Who funds SIERRA INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY & ENVIRONMENT ↗
- Who funds TREEPEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF FILIPINO AMERICAN ↗
- Who funds Coastal Corridor Alliance ↗
- Who funds COMPUTER-USING EDUCATORS INC ↗
- Who funds Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs - Community Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds Bear Yuba Land Trust ↗
- Who funds SEMILLAS SOCIEDAD CIVIL ↗
- Who funds CIVICORPS ↗
- Who funds Hispanic Access Foundation ↗
- Who funds SIERRA NEVADA ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Santa Monica Mountains Fund ↗
- Who funds The Stewardship Network ↗
- Who funds MEDIA ARTS CENTER SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds SAN JOAQUIN RIVER PARKWAY & CONSERVATION TRUST ↗
- Who funds LOWELL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds ADVENTURE RISK CHALLENGE ↗
- Who funds CITY OF DREAMS ↗
- Who funds ARTS CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds MEWATER FOUNDATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds VENTANA WILDLIFE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Exploring New Horizons ↗
- Who funds OUTSIDE THE LENS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN RIVER CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds City Surf Project ↗
- Who funds Project Bandaloop ↗
- Who funds LAND TOGETHER DBA INSIGHT GARDEN PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds Tuolumne River Preservation Trust dba Yosemite Rivers Alliance ↗
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 State Parks Foundation · Justice Outside · The California Endowment · The Joseph and Vera Long Foundation · Resources Legacy Fund · Patagoniaorg · Save the Redwoods League · The California Wellness Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · East Bay Community Foundation · Clif Family Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard 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 Parks California 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.