· Private foundation
Robert a Waller 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 $10k120 grants · $370k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $86k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SEQUOYAH SCHOOL | $26,000 |
| REGENERATIVE RANCH FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA | $14,500 |
| AMERICAN CORPORATION OF THE ARTS | $10,488 |
| OPERATION UNDERGROUND RAILROAD INC | $10,000 |
| CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT | $10,000 |
| MAKE-A-WISH GREATER LOS ANGELES | $9,000 |
| LAS MADRINAS | $8,500 |
| BOISE SCHOOLS FOUNDATION | $8,200 |
| ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION CA SOUTHLA | $8,000 |
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPIT | $8,000 |
| TREASURE STATE FOUNDATION | $8,000 |
| AMERICAN AUTOIMMUNE RELATED DISEASE | $8,000 |
| PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION | $8,000 |
| WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT | $8,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $294k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 88% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +34% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
171 repeat relationships — 96 still active in FY2025, 75 since wound down; 27 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $71k 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
- PHPasadena Hospital Association Ltd9× · 2017–2025 · $152k · revenue +25%
- LMLAS MADRINAS7× · 2018–2025 · $128k · revenue +11%
WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC9× · 2017–2025 · $97k · revenue +70%
Funded once
- SSSEQUYAH SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $18k
- GLGREATER LOS ANGELES ZOOLOGICAL ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +19%
- PMPASADENA MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA ARTone grant, 2017 · $5k
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 ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
The mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.
The mission of the university of california, irvine foundation (uc irvine foundation) is to raise and manage private funds to support uc irvine's broader mission of excellence in teaching, research and public service. to this end, the uc…
The Institute is a scientific research center dedicated to conducting basic and applied research to advance the understanding of human disease and the improvement of human health. The Institute fosters an innovative research environment…
To harness the power of the human immune system and advanced computing technologies to create and translate scientific discoveries into next generation vaccines and therapies for prevention, control and cure of chronic diseases, enabling…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
The uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
The foundation's mission is to improve the oral health of all californians by supporting the dental profession and its efforts to meet community needs.
To support educational, research and public functions and programs of the riverside campus of the university of california.
The association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Saint John's Health Center Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Tiny Tails K-9 Rescue. 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 39 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
184 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 184 of the 265 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 Pasadena Hospital Association Ltd ↗
- Who funds LAS MADRINAS ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds PASADENA HUMANE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PASADENA SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds BALLET PACIFICA ↗
- Who funds Children of the Night ↗
- Who funds WARRIORS & QUIET WATERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Pasadena Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds MIGHTY OAKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE PASADENA PLAYHOUSE STATE THEATRE OF CALIFORNIA INC ↗
- Who funds St Luke's Health Foundation Ltd ↗
- Who funds VISTAMAR SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ↗
- Who funds SANDPIPERS PHILANTHROPY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds DR SUSAN LOVE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SIERRA MADRE SEARCH & RESCUE TEAM ↗
- Who funds The Altadena Mountain Rescue Team ↗
- Who funds MARCH OF DIMES INC ↗
- Who funds ST JOHN'S NORTHWESTERN ACADEMIES ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds FISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds OUR RESCUE ↗
- Who funds CATE SCHOOL ↗
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: Pasadena Community Foundation · The Ahmanson Foundation · The Rose Hills Foundation · California Community Foundation · The Ralph M Parsons Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · John Jewett & Helen Chandler Garland Fou Ndation · S Mark Taper Foundation · The Green Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Ann Peppers Foundation · Gail G Ellis Foundation 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 Robert a Waller 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.
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Holistic Life Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Robert a Waller Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Robert a Waller 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.