· Private foundation
Robert & Margaret McNamara 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k54 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $62k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE PHOGONOT TRUST | $34,292 |
| CENTER FOR LAND BASED LEARNING | $27,350 |
| UNIVERSITY MASS AMHERST | $5,000 |
| YOLO COUNTY CASA | $4,016 |
| THE EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD PROJECT | $3,525 |
| GLOBAL VILLAGE FOUNDATION | $2,800 |
| WAGING PEACE IN VIETNAM EDUCATION | $1,500 |
| WINTERS FARM TO SCHOOL | $1,500 |
| FEAST | $1,080 |
| YOLO FOOD BANK | $750 |
| LA PENA | $600 |
| Individual grant recipient | $519 |
| PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE OF CALIF | $500 |
| NATIONAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL | $500 |
| KQED | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY18–22, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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 +44% since the first grant, against +35% for the ones you funded once.
58 repeat relationships — 34 still active in FY2025, 24 since wound down; 21 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $8k 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
- CFCenter for Land-Based Learning6× · 2018–2025 · $159k · revenue +169%
- MSMCE SOCIAL CAPITAL2× · 2018–2019 · $22k · revenue +35%
- TEThe Edible Schoolyard Project dba The Alice Waters Institute7× · 2019–2025 · $20k · revenue +273%
Funded once
- FOFRIENDS OF PROJECT RENEWone grant, 2022 · $11k · revenue +17%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $6k
- WOWork on Climateone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue -21%
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 union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The mission of the California Farmland Trust is to help farmers protect the best farmland in the world.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
To enhance the long-term viability of california agriculture through leadership development, which in turn benefits the people and communities that agriculture serves. we grow leaders who make a difference.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
Food forward fights hunger and prevents food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce, connecting this abundance with people experiencing food insecurity, and inspiring others to do the same.
The San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory is dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats through science and outreach.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
Independent nonpartisan newsroom serving Santa Cruz County, California we are all watching and engaged in our local government, our needs are addressed, democracy works better and our community is stronger.
Our mission is to protect local nature and farmland to ensure a healthy environment for everyone.
The Sierra Fund (TSF) is a non-profit organization with a mission to restore ecosystem and community resiliency in the Sierra Nevada.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Leadership Forum Mountain Valley Chapter and the most unlike its peers is Bread & Puppet Theatre Inc. 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 32 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 4% 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.
89 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. 89 of the 182 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 Center for Land-Based Learning ↗
- Who funds MCE SOCIAL CAPITAL ↗
- Who funds The Edible Schoolyard Project dba The Alice Waters Institute ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds WINTERS FARM TO SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Rios to Rivers ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF PROJECT RENEW ↗
- Who funds UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DEMOCRACY NOW PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds KITCHEN TABLE ADVISORS ↗
- Who funds Ecological Farming Association ↗
- Who funds Work on Climate ↗
- Who funds YOLO LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Real Organic Project Inc ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Sustainable Conservation ↗
- Who funds SOLANO LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE SAND COUNTY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S VINEYARD MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE UC DAVIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LEADERSHIP FORUM MOUNTAIN VALLEY CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds PUTAH CREEK COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds YOLO FOOD BANK ↗
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 · Sacramento Region Community Foundation · Mariani Nut Company Foundation Inc · Marin Community Foundation · Clif Family Foundation · Teichert Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Western Health Advantage · The James Irvine Foundation · The California Wellness Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · The Elizabeth R & William J Patterson 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 Robert & Margaret McNamara 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.
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Real Organic Project Inc — 1% of income from government
- Bread & Puppet Theatre 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.
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How do I get to Robert & Margaret McNamara Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Robert & Margaret McNamara 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.