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Petaluma Educational Foundation at a glanceAlso receives grants: funding profile →

· Public charity

Petaluma Educational Foundation

Pef creates impactful educational opportunities for all students in our community.

$726k
Granted FY2025still arriving
24
Grants FY2025still arriving
1
States reached
$82k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
05Through PlinthRead
01What it funds
0199% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Education$1.8MArts & Culture$21kYouth Development$15kHealth$10kOther$0
02FY2025 · 24 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 24 grants below total $425,474, the rows itemized in this filing. The $726,186 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $300,712 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k5 grants · $35k
  • $10k–50k18 grants · $309k
  • $50k–250k1 grant · $82k
$16,711
Median grant
1
States reached
$7.6M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
ST VINCENTS HIGH SCHOOL$82,000
SPRING HILL SCHOOL$29,853
RIVER MONTESSORI$20,191
PENNGROVE SCHOOL$20,000
MCKINLEY SCHOOL$19,786
GRANT SCHOOL$19,700
OLD ADOBE UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT$18,829
MCDOWELL SCHOOL$18,543
PETALUMA HIGH SCHOOL$18,023
WAUGH SCHOOL DISTRICT$17,703
DUNHAM SCHOOL$17,612
PETALUMA JUNIOR HIGH$16,711
PETALUMA SCHOOL DISTRICT$16,183
MIWOK SCHOOL$14,744
KENILWORTH JR HIGH$13,507
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 8%ST VINCENTS HIGH SCHOOL: $82k → 8%PENNGROVE SCHOOL: $20k → 9%ST VINCENTS HIGH SCHOOL: $50k → 8%PETALUMA HIGH SCHOOL: $31k → 8%SPRING HILL SCHOOL: $30k → 8%KENILWORTH JR HIGH: $29k → 9%PETALUMA HIGH SCHOOL: $30k → 8%MIWOK SCHOOL: $21k → 9%ST VINCENT HIGH: $30k → 8%KENILWORTH JR HIGH: $20k → 9%PETALUMA HIGH SCHOOL: $27k → 8%RIVER MONTESSORI: $20k → 9%ST VINCENT ELEMENTARY: $20k → 8%OLD ADOBE UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT: $19k → 9%MCKINLEY SCHOOL: $20k → 8%MCDOWELL SCHOOL: $19k → 9%GRANT SCHOOL: $20k → 8%WAUGH SCHOOL DISTRICT: $18k → 9%PETALUMA HIGH SCHOOL: $18k → 8%KENILWORTH JUNIOR HIGH: $17k → 9%DUNHAM SCHOOL: $18k → 8%CASA GRANDE HIGH: $16k → 9%PETALUMA JUNIOR HIGH: $17k → 8%RIVER MONTESSORI CHARTER SCHOOL: $15k → 9%PETALUMA HIGH SCHOOL: $16k → 8%LOMA VISTA SCHOOL: $15k → 9%PETALUMA SCHOOL DISTRICT: $16k → 8%LOMA VISTA: $15k → 9%ADDITIONAL GRANTS TO SCHOOLS UNDER 5000 THRESHOLD - DETAIL ON FILE: $16k → 8%MCDOWELL SCHOOL: $15k → 9%GRANT SCHOOL: $15k → 8%LOMA VISTA SCHOOL: $15k → 9%SPRING HILL SCHOOL: $15k → 8%RIVER MONTESSORI CHARTER SCHOOL: $15k → 9%MCNEAR SCHOOL: $15k → 8%CORONA CREEK SCHOOL: $15k → 9%MARY COLLINS SCHOOL AT CHERRY VALLEY: $15k → 8%WAUGH SCHOOL DISTRICT: $15k → 9%MCKINLEY SCHOOL: $15k → 8%CORONA CREEK SCHOOL: $15k → 9%SPRING HILL SCHOOL: $15k → 8%CASA GRANDE HIGH: $15k → 9%LIVE OAK CHARTER SCHOOL: $15k → 8%TWO ROCK SCHOOL: $15k → 8%PETALUMA JUNIOR HIGH: $15k → 8%MCNEAR SCHOOL: $15k → 8%MCNEAR SCHOOL: $15k → 8%LIVE OAKS: $15k → 8%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

98%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$1.8M · 14 repeat orgs$34k to everyone else

14 repeat relationships: 8 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

14
2

Total granted

$1.8M
$16k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+33%
+240%

Still filing today

21%
50%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $18k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’19’21’22’23’24’25
EducationYouth DevelopmentOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • HC
    HARVEST CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
    7× · 2017–2025 · $70k · revenue +72%
  • TS
    THE SPRING HILL SCHOOL
    4× · 2021–2025 · $61k · revenue +33%
  • RM
    RIVER MONTESSORI CHARTER SCHOOL
    4× · 2021–2025 · $54k · revenue +18%

Funded once

  • UA
    UNITED ANGLERS OF CASA GRANDE INCgraduated
    one grant, 2018 · $14k · revenue +240%
  • SM
    SONOMA MARIN FAIR STATE OF CA 4TH DISTRICT AGRIGULTURAL ASSOC
    one grant, 2021 · $2k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 6 of the 18 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
5/6
Grantees still filing
5/6
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Petaluma City Schools: $842,389 · OtherPetaluma City SchoolsST VINCENT DE PAUL HIGH SCHOOL: $256,072 · OtherST VINCENT DE PAUL HIGH SCHOOLMIWOK SCHOOL: $159,991 · OtherMIWOK SCHOOLWAUGH SCHOOL DISTRICT: $139,192 · OtherWAUGH SCHOOL DISTRICTSonoma Valley Unified School: $69,810 · OtherWILSON SCHOOL: $57,133 · Other+8 more: $114,163 · Other+8 moreHARVEST CHRISTIAN SCHOOL: $70,482 · EducationHARVEST CHR…THE SPRING HILL SCHOOL: $61,353 · EducationTHE SPRING …RIVER MONTESSORI CHARTER SCHOOL: $53,691 · EducationRIVER MONTE…UNITED ANGLERS OF CASA GRANDE INC: $14,400 · Youth Development
Other$1,638,750Education$185,526Youth Development$14,400

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetHARVEST CHRISTIAN SCHOOL: $70,482 over 7y, 1.0% of budgetTHE SPRING HILL SCHOOL: $61,353 over 4y, 0.5% of budgetRIVER MONTESSORI CHARTER SCHOOL: $53,691 over 4y, 0.9% of budgetUNITED ANGLERS OF CASA GRANDE INC: $14,400 over 1y, 19% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds HARVEST CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
  • Who funds THE SPRING HILL SCHOOL ↗
  • Who funds RIVER MONTESSORI CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
  • Who funds UNITED ANGLERS OF CASA GRANDE INC ↗
  • Who funds Boys and Girls Clubs of Marin ↗

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Sonoma County Communi…Donor Advised Charita…Amazonsmile Foundation
Sonoma County Community FoundationCA13.4× affinity4 shared granteesties to 2 of 2Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Sonoma County Community Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Petaluma Educational Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Petaluma Educational Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2025
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%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 · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.
    05Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Petaluma Educational Foundation?

    Find your warmest path to Petaluma Educational 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 18 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its 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.

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

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Petaluma Educational’s filings →

    More from the funding graph

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    The regranting layer
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