· Public charity
Public Advocates Inc
For more than five decades, public advocates has challenged the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity, and climate justice.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k8 grants · $309k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $724k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE EDUCATION TRUST INC | $115,000 |
| FLORIDA RISING TOGETHER INC | $100,000 |
| LEGAL AID OF MARIN | $68,000 |
| HOUSING LEADERSHIP COUNCIL OF SAN MATEO COUNTY | $68,000 |
| SVHOME | $64,000 |
| EAST BAY HOUSING ORGANIZATIONS | $64,000 |
| CALIFORNIANS FOR JUSTICE | $64,000 |
| TENANTS TOGETHER | $62,500 |
| ACCE INSTITUTE | $62,500 |
| PEOPLE POWER MEDIA | $56,000 |
| THE PUBLIC INTEREST LAW PROJECT | $40,000 |
| LIBERATION IN A GENERATION INC | $38,473 |
| CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY | $38,473 |
| POWERSWITCH ACTION | $38,473 |
| VOICES OF COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS & LEADERS INC | $38,473 |
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 (FY19–24, $605k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 51% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
26 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 16 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, 58% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $434k 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
- TTTenants Together7× · 2019–2025 · $548k · revenue +115% · 28% of their budget
- VOVOICES OF COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS & LEADERS (VOCAL-NY) INC5× · 2021–2025 · $408k · revenue +100%
- NCNORTH CAROLINA HOUSING COALITION INC3× · 2022–2024 · $278k · revenue +83%
Funded once
CATALYST CALIFORNIAone grant, 2020 · $90k · revenue -46%- GOGENTE ORGANIZADAone grant, 2023 · $30k · revenue +25%
THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $30k · revenue +31%
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.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
The California Center for Movement Legal Services (Movement Legal) provides legal services in the pursuit of improving the lives of California's traditionally underserved residents, carrying out legal work that fosters community led policy…
The Asian Law Caucus's mission is to promote, advance, and represent the legal and civil rights of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, recognizing that social, economic, political and racial inequalities continue to exist…
The american civil liberties union of northern california (aclu nc union) defends and advances the principles of freedom, equality and justice contained in the united states constitution. aclu nc union, a california mutual benefit…
California Donor Table anchors a hub of donors, foundations, and community leaders. We pool together our resources to shape California into a truly democratic state that works for the people, not the powerful. Rooted in our commitment to…
CAUSE's mission is to build grassroots power to realize social, economic and environmental justice for the people of the Central Coast Region through policy research, leadership development, organizing and advocacy.
As one of the most enduring civil rights institutions on the West Coast, we work to dismantle systems of oppression and racism, and build an equitable and just society.
In 2024, Inner City Law Center, ICLC, served over 3,400 people, helping vulnerable Angelenos to remain in their homes and recover nearly $20.5 million in financial benefits.
The L.A. Co-op Lab is a collective that builds capacity for worker ownership in Los Angeles as a pathway toward a more equitable and democratic economy.
Legal Link removes legal barriers that prolong poverty by adding critically needed capacity to the legal ecosystem.
Mid-city community advocacy network works to build a safe, productive, and healthy community for the residents of city heights and greater san diego through collaboration, advocacy, and organizing.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Voices of Community Activists & Leaders (Vocal-Ny) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Schools and Communities First. 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 24 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
42 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.
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 Californians For Justice Education Fund ↗
- Who funds RIGHT TO THE CITY ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Tenants Together ↗
- Who funds ACCE Institute ↗
- Who funds VOICES OF COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS & LEADERS (VOCAL-NY) INC ↗
- Who funds Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law ↗
- Who funds Poverty and Race Research Action Council ↗
- Who funds UNITED FOR A NEW ECONOMY ↗
- Who funds POLICYLINK ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA HOUSING COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds Make The Road States Inc ↗
- Who funds The Education Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds Miami Workers Center Inc ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA RISING TOGETHER INC ↗
- Who funds EAST BAY COMMUNITY LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto Inc ↗
- Who funds CATALYST CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds National Housing and Community Development Law Project ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY INC ↗
- Who funds POWERSWITCH ACTION ↗
- Who funds HOUSING LEADERSHIP COUNCIL OF SAN MATEO COUNTY ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID OF MARIN ↗
- Who funds SV HOME ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE POWER MEDIA ↗
- Who funds Inland Congregations United for Change Sponsoring Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds PARENT INSTITUTE FOR QUALITY EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds Faith In Action East Bay ↗
- Who funds SACRAMENTO AREA CONGREGATIONS TOGETHER ↗
- Who funds Urban Habitat Program ↗
- Who funds TRUE NORTH ORGANIZING NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Public Interest Law Project ↗
- Who funds LIBERATION IN A GENERATION ↗
- Who funds ORANGE COUNTY CONGREGATION COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds GENTE ORGANIZADA ↗
- Who funds THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action ↗
- Who funds Kheprw Institute dba KI NuMedia CCFI ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL COALITION ↗
- Who funds SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITIES FIRST ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI JOBS WITH JUSTICE ↗
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 Francisco Foundation · The James Irvine Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · The California Endowment · East Bay Community Foundation · New Venture Fund · The California Wellness Foundation · California Community Foundation · Sunlight Giving · Liberty Hill Foundation · Tides Foundation · The Ford 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 Public Advocates Inc 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.
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% 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.