· Private foundation
Richard and Jocelyn Vortmann Foundation
Its FY2023 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of Richard and Jocelyn Vortmann Foundation’s FY2023 grant dollars went to Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2023 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year Richard and Jocelyn Vortmann Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 5 organizations, $64k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k10 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $30k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Pepperdine University | $10,000 |
| Rady's Children Hospital | $10,000 |
| NYU Health | $10,000 |
| Living Desert | $7,500 |
| St James by the Sea | $6,000 |
| Scripps Health Foundation | $5,000 |
| Shiley Eye Center | $5,000 |
| La Jolla Inst for Allergy Immun | $5,000 |
| American Family Association | $2,000 |
| La Jolla Christmas Donation | $2,000 |
| Gamble House USC | $500 |
| KPBS | $500 |
| Church of Our Savior | $500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–22) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 18% of your 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 +63% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2021, 5 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2022, 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
- SHSCRIPPS HEALTH6× · 2017–2022 · $132k · revenue +72%
- PUPEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY5× · 2017–2021 · $36k · revenue +51%
- LDLIVING DESERT THE5× · 2017–2021 · $20k · revenue +84%
Funded once
- CFChopra Foundationone grant, 2017 · $18k · revenue -32%
- CAConsciousness and Healing Instone grant, 2018 · $15k
- TSTHE SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTEgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $14k · revenue +69%
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 central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…
The mission of southern california university of health sciences (scu) is to educate students as competent, caring and successful practitioners of integrative healthcare. the university is committed to providing excellence in academics,…
Please see schedule o
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
Nyu is a private university with approximately 60,000 matriculating students in 20 schools and institutes. nyu's primary missions are education, research and scholarship, and patient care.
Leadership in the prevention, treatment, and cure of cancer through excellence, vision and cost effectiveness in patient care, outreach programs, research, and education.
Stanford university is one of a select group of american universities that have achieved eminence in both undergraduate and graduate education and research - cont'd sch o.
To further the conservation, improvement and restoration of human eyesight" (mrs. doheny - 1947).
Connect is an innovation instigator established to cultivate san diego's life science and tech communities. a trusted partner for more than 30 years, we propel our region's entrepreneurs as they create and scale their companies from…
Our mission is to break down barriers to als research to find effective treatments. by uniting academia, the pharma and biotech industry, government, venture capital, related nonprofits, and the als community, we aim to overcome the…
Mission statement: mission: caring for our patients first and our people always. vision: to be the most comprehensive, integrated and connected health system for getting and staying well. values: excellence - we deliver high-quality,…
Loma linda university, a seventh-day adventist christian health sciences institution, seeks to further the healing and teaching ministry of jesus christ "to make man whole" by: - educating ethical and proficient christian health…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is La Jolla Institute for Immunology and the most unlike its peers is American Lung Association. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 29 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 FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds SCRIPPS HEALTH ↗
- Who funds PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LIVING DESERT THE ↗
- Who funds LA JOLLA INSTITUTE FOR IMMUNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds Chopra Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LUNG ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds TROOPATHON ↗
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: 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 Richard and Jocelyn Vortmann 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.