· Private foundation
Returning Home Foundation
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.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $79k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| Others Under 500 Each | $28,193 |
| ACLU Foundation of So CA | $20,000 |
| Orangewood Foundation | $11,000 |
| Prison Policy Initiative PPI | $10,000 |
| Charitable Ventures CO Hire | $10,000 |
| Office of Restorative Justice | $5,000 |
| Laguna Beach Food Pantry | $5,000 |
| CSPC | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $118k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 21% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 98% of Returning Home Foundation’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, 86% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 1% — 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 +37% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 22 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- OFORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION6× · 2020–2025 · $301k · revenue +13%
- PKPROJECT KINSHIP8× · 2017–2024 · $68k · revenue ×59
- WWISEPLACE2× · 2019–2021 · $25k · revenue +12%
Funded once
- OYOrangewood Yound Adult Courtone grant, 2022 · $50k
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $20k · revenue +65%- AACSOLone grant, 2020 · $10k
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.
The mission of the prison law office is to reduce incarceration and ensure humane and constitutional treatment of people who remain in prisons, jails and on parole.
To provide civil legal services to low-income individuals and to promote equal access to the justice system through advocacy, legal counseling, innovative self-help services, in depth legal representation, community education, and economic…
See schedule o for detailsthe organization defends the civil liberties enshrined in the us constitution and the bill of rights through litigation, policy advocacy, media advocacy, and organizing. it fights to secure and protect the civil…
The purpose is to exonerate the wrongly convicted, uncover and remedy past misuse of evidence in the courtroom, and improve the dialogue among stakeholders in the criminal legal system to prevent future injustice.
Legal Link removes legal barriers that prolong poverty by adding critically needed capacity to the legal ecosystem.
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.
Southern California Immigration Project is a public interest nonprofit organization dedicated to providing pro bono legal services to survivors of human and civil rights violations.
The fair housing foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the elimination of discrimination in housing and promoting equal access to housing choices for everyone.
Court Appointed Special Advocates of Orange County provides a powerful voice and a meaningful connection for children who have experienced abuse, neglect and abandoment.
FVLC helps diverse communities in Alameda County heal from domestic violence and sexual assault, advocating for justice and healthy relationships. We provide survivor-centered legal and crisis intervention services, offer prevention for…
See schedule o for detailsthe organization defends the civil liberties enshrined in the us constitution and the bill of rights through policy advocacy, media advocacy, and organizing. it fights to secure and protect the civil rights of all…
Assist prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families with the immediate and long-termeffects of incarceration and provide services for successful re-entry.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Sentencing Project and the most unlike its peers is Facts Education Fund. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 52 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 ORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds People For Irvine Community Health ↗
- Who funds PROJECT KINSHIP ↗
- Who funds WISEPLACE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SAFETY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Voice of Orange CountyOrg ↗
- Who funds Court Appointed Special Advocates ↗
- Who funds FRIENDSHIP SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds FACTS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds CHARITABLE VENTURES OF ORANGE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THE SENTENCING PROJECT ↗
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: Orange County Community Foundation · O L Halsell Foundation · Sisters of St Joseph Healthcare Foundation · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Returning Home Foundation 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Returning Home Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Returning Home 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.