· Private foundation
Golden Foundation
Its FY2024 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
51% of Golden Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Spur Community Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 8 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Golden Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 6 organizations, $41k. 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k5 grants · $16k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $25k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST LUKE'S WOOD RIVER FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF BIGWOOD | $10,000 |
| SUN VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL | $6,000 |
| THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| SAWTOOTH BOTANICAL GARDEN | $4,000 |
| PEO FOUNDATION | $500 |
| KETCHUM SUN VALLEY VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT | $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 (FY17–24, $80k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 34% 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.
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.
18 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2023, 12 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, 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 FY2024, 69% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- SLST LUKE'S WOOD RIVER FOUNDATION INC2× · 2022–2023 · $90k · revenue +19%
- SDSAN DIEGO HUMANE SOCIETY AND SPCA4× · 2017–2020 · $75k · revenue +134%
- FOFRIENDS OF VISTA HILL FOUNDATION4× · 2017–2020 · $55k · revenue +83%
Funded once
- KFKELLEY FAMILY CHARITABLE FUNDone grant, 2021 · $668k
- TCTHE COMMUNITY LIBRARYone grant, 2021 · $20k
- JCJACOBS & CUSHMAN SAN DIEGO FOOD BANKgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $20k · revenue +35%
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 san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
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,…
Founded in 1924 by philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, Scripps Health is a $4.9 billion, private not-for-profit integrated health system in San Diego, Ca. (see Sch O)
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,…
The mission of san diego botanic garden: we garden to create, share, and apply plant wisdom in our world. the organization's diverse topography and wide variety of microclimates provides visitors with the varied sensations of strolling…
On a mission to connect every person facing hunger with nutritious meals by maximizing food rescue. through direct service and community partnerships, feeding san diego provides more than 26 million meals each year to children, families,…
City of Hope's mission is to make hope a reality for all touched by cancer and diabetes. PLEASE SEE SCHEDULE O FOR A CONTINUATION OF OUR MISSION
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…
Mission: the mission of san diego opera is to deliver exceptional performances and exciting, accessible programs to diverse audiences, focusing on community partnerships, and the transformative and expressive power of the human voice. as…
Nature collective's mission is to drive a passion for nature for all. we think inclusively and diversely when serving those devoid of nature those who remember nature and want to connect back to it and those who have an affinity with…
The mission of san diego volunteer lawyer program, inc. is to provide equal access to the justice system by serving as a bridge between indigent and other disadvantaged people in san diego county and the volunteer lawyers who are willing…
To promote, advance, and educate its members and the medical community in the science of diagnostic medical sonography.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Elderhelp of San Diego and the most unlike its peers is Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. 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 41 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 50 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 ST LUKE'S WOOD RIVER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO HUMANE SOCIETY AND SPCA ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF VISTA HILL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SPUR COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ANGEL FACES ↗
- Who funds POINT LOMA ASSOCIATION %BRAD NELSON ↗
- Who funds FOREVER BALBOA PARK ↗
- Who funds Burn Institute ↗
- Who funds ELDERHELP OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds SUN VALLEY SUMMER SYMPHONY INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds St Madeleine Sophies Center Inc ↗
- Who funds JACOBS & CUSHMAN SAN DIEGO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO RESCUE MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds SANFORD BURNHAM PREBYS MEDICAL DISCOVERY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Sun Valley Community School Inc ↗
- Who funds SAWTOOTH BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds CAMP OLIVER INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds BALLET SUN VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds MARINE TOYS FOR TOTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO CENTER FOR THE BLIND ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Special Olympics Oregon Inc ↗
- Who funds WOOD RIVER LAND TRUST CO ↗
- Who funds SUN VALLEY WRITERS' CONFERENCE INC ↗
- Who funds STELLA'S SHELTER FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDHELP INC ↗
- Who funds BLAINE COUNTY SENIORS COUNCIL INC THE SENIOR CONNECTION ↗
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 Diego Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · Spur Community Foundation Inc · The Cushman Foundation · The Springcreek Foundation · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · David C Copley Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Sempra Foundation · The Goldman Family Foundation Inc · Heller Foundation of San Diego
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 Golden 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 Golden Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Golden 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.