· Public charity
Peninsula Open Space Trust
Post protects open space on the peninsula and in the south bay for the benefit of all.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 24 grants below total $6,466,125 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $9,209,125 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $2,743,000 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $197k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $475k
- $250k+2 grants · $5.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COUNTY OF SAN MATEO PARKS DEPARTMENT | $5,265,188 |
| THE CONSERVATION FUND | $500,000 |
| CLIMATE RESILIENT COMMUNITIES | $185,000 |
| SANTA CLARA VALLEY OPEN SPACE AUTHORITY | $100,000 |
| SAN MATEO RESOURCE CONSERVATION DISTRICT | $80,000 |
| GREEN FOOTHILLS | $60,000 |
| AMAH MUTSUN LAND TRUST | $50,000 |
| TOGETHER BAY AREA | $35,000 |
| SANTA CLARA VALLEY HABITAT AGENCY | $25,000 |
| CALIFORNIA COUNCIL OF LAND TRUSTS | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS | $15,000 |
| MUWEKMA OHLONE PRESERVATION FOUNDATION THE | $13,837 |
| SAVED BY NATURE | $13,000 |
| CANOPY | $10,500 |
| PUENTE DE LA COSTA SUR | $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 (FY23–25, $223k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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 +84% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 7 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, 10% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5.8M 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
- SFSEMPERVIRENS FUND4× · 2017–2025 · $2.4M · revenue +180%
- GFGreen Foothills Foundation dba Green Foothills3× · 2021–2025 · $414k · revenue +47%
- CFCommittee for Green Foothills Action3× · 2017–2020 · $285k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- COCITY OF SAN JOSEone grant, 2020 · $4.7M
- STSAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUEgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $2.0M · revenue +47%
- WHWILDLIFE HERITAGE FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $869k · revenue +65%
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 conserve natural resources, agricultural land and open spaces for present and future generations.
At Yosemite Rivers Alliance, we unite conservation and community to protect and restore the three rivers that ?ow through the Yosemite Regionthe Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Merced.
The mission of the California Farmland Trust is to help farmers protect the best farmland in the world.
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.
Placer Land Trust works with willing landowners and conservation partners to permanently protect and care for natural and agricultural lands in Placer County for current and future generations.
We conserve the lands and waters of California's heartland.
The vitality of open spaces is essential to the health of our earth, air, water, native plants, and animals. Our goal is to ensure that the beauty, diversity, and fullness of our wild lands continue to enrich and sustain all generations of…
The purpose of the organization is to monitor, manage, and preserve conservation easements it stewards in northern california. the organization acquires conservation easements in land exhibiting important natural features to protect and…
Conserve the beauty, character, and diversity of significant lands in far northern california. currently shasta land trust holds conservation easements that permanently protect about 66,000 acres of land.
The foundation works with diverse groups representing many interests to acquire and restore critical wildlife habitat and protecting species
California Coastkeeper Alliance unites Waterkeeper programs statewide to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Land Trust of Santa Cruz County and the most unlike its peers is La Honda Educational Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 25 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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 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 SEMPERVIRENS FUND ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVATION FUND A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Green Foothills Foundation dba Green Foothills ↗
- Who funds SONOMA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds Committee for Green Foothills Action ↗
- Who funds Amah Mutsun Land Trust ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF RESOURCE CONSERVATION DISTRICTS ↗
- Who funds Climate Resilient Communities ↗
- Who funds La Honda Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds California Council of Land Trusts ↗
- Who funds Coastside Land Trust ↗
- Who funds TOGETHER BAY AREA ↗
- Who funds PUENTE DE LA COSTA SUR ↗
- Who funds EPACENTER ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLIER ↗
- Who funds SAVED BY NATURE ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Muwekma Ohlone Tribe Inc ↗
- Who funds PIE RANCH ↗
- Who funds Canopy ↗
- Who funds Nuestra Casa de East Palo Alto ↗
- Who funds SAN MATEO COUNTY PARKS AND RECREATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PESCADERO EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAND TRUST OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SAN BENITO AGRICULTURAL LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds MUWEKMA OHLONE PRESERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
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 David and Lucile Packard Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Resources Legacy Fund · Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation · Sand Hill Foundation · Tomkat Ranch Educational Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Atkinson Foundation · Bothin Foundation · Patagoniaorg · Community Foundation Santa Cruz County · The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment 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 Peninsula Open Space Trust 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.