· Private foundation
Robert Nelson 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k19 grants · $88k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $320k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $160k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY | $80,000 |
| CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY LOS ANGELES | $80,000 |
| HAPPY TRAILS FOR KIDS | $35,000 |
| LOS ANGELES MISSION | $35,000 |
| LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| UNION RESCUE MISSION | $30,000 |
| JOVENES INC | $30,000 |
| THE MUSIC CENTER | $25,000 |
| LA EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| CHILDRENS LAW CENTER OF CA | $20,000 |
| HCRI INC (HEALTH COMMUNICATION RESEARCH) | $20,000 |
| CITY OF GRANDVILLE | $15,000 |
| WISE READERS TO LEADERS | $15,000 |
| KENT ISD | $15,000 |
| PROJECT ROPA | $10,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $435k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 94% 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.
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 +23% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 20 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, 57% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $240k 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
- URUNION RESCUE MISSION6× · 2020–2025 · $200k · revenue +67%
HAPPY TRAILS FOR KIDS5× · 2021–2025 · $90k · revenue +45%- MAMinority Aids Project Los Angeles4× · 2021–2025 · $80k · revenue +3%
Funded once
- CSCALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY LOS ANGELES FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $80k · revenue -55%
- PLPenny Lane Centersone grant, 2022 · $75k · revenue +16%
- ARABBEY ROAD INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +181%
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.
Our mission is to create housing and service options that model, with respect and dignity, sustainable, environmentally sensitive, affordable communities for people of limited resources.
Family promise of the south bay assists families experiencing housing insecurity with short-term shelter, case management, and navigation with the goal of creating a sustainable solution for their family.
Hunger action los angeles ends hunger and promotes healthy eating through advocacy, education, and appropriate direct service. the chief program area currently is the market match prgram operated by hala at 22 farmers markets in la county…
Lafh permanent housing corp. i (casa central) has been established to own a 6-unit complex located in los angeles, california, which provides permanent housing for families with low income.
The organization's mission is to mobilize resources to fight hunger in our community. to fulfill its mission, the food bank:* sources and acquires nutritious food and other products and distribute them to people experiencing nutrition…
Farm2People's mission is to secure local harvests and fight hunger in Greater Los Angeles.
Community organizing, education, advocacy, leadership development, direct services and organizational development for communities faced with immense poverty.
La Casa de las Madres' mission is to respond to calls for help from DV victims, of all ages, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We give survivors the tools to transform their lives. We seek to prevent future violence by educating the…
Mercy house's most significant exempt activities focus on ending homelessness and providing comprehensive housing and support services. the organization offers homeless prevention, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and…
Project angel food (the organization) improves health and fights food insecurity for critically ill individuals in los angeles county through its medically tailored meal program and nutrition counseling. for over 35 years, they have served…
L.a. family housing corporation and its affiliated organizations help homeless and low-income families and individuals of the greater los angeles area transition out of poverty and create lasting stability by providing a comprehensive…
Food on foot is a nonprofit dedicated to assisting our unhoused and low-income neighbors in los angeles with nutritious meals, clothing, and a fresh start through life-skills training, full-time employment, and permanent housing.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Casa of Los Angeles and the most unlike its peers is Health Communication Research. 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 30 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% 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 15% 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.
50 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. 50 of the 95 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 LOS ANGELES MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds UNION RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds HAPPY TRAILS FOR KIDS ↗
- Who funds Minority Aids Project Los Angeles ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY LOS ANGELES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Penny Lane Centers ↗
- Who funds ABBEY ROAD INC ↗
- Who funds WISE READERS TO LEADERS ↗
- Who funds Project Ride Inc ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES FIRE DEPARTMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JOVENES INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND RAPIDS YOUTH COMMONWEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds LEADERSHIP STOCKTON ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OKIZU FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GUIDING LIGHT MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds BEYOND 26 INC ↗
- Who funds Project Ropa ↗
- Who funds FOOD FORWARD INC ↗
- Who funds SAFE HAVEN MINISTRIES INC ↗
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: California Community Foundation · Grand Rapids Community Foundation · Conrad N Hilton Foundation · The Rose Hills Foundation · The Annenberg Foundation · Heart of West Michigan United Way · Shelter Partnership Inc · The Ralph M Parsons Foundation · Consumers Energy Foundation · Cdv5 Foundation · The Mercantile Bank Foundation · The Ahmanson 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 Nelson 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 Robert Nelson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Robert Nelson 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.