· Private foundation
Sa Ming 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
99% of Sa Ming Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Schwab Charitable Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 2 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year Sa Ming Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 9 organizations, $23k. 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COLLEGE OF THE MAINLAND FOUNDATION INC | $5,000 |
| SPRING ISLAND TR | $5,000 |
| FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| SOUTH CAROLINA COASTAL CONSERVATION LEAGUE INC | $2,500 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY | $2,500 |
| MUSIC FOR LIFE | $1,500 |
| BEAUFORT COUNTY OPEN LAND TRUST INC | $1,000 |
| PARKINSONS FOUNDATION INC | $1,000 |
| HOPEFUL HORIZONS | $1,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD SOUTH ATLANTIC | $750 |
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 (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 82% of your 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 +29% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 12 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, 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 FY2025, 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
- SISPRING ISLAND TRUST7× · 2018–2024 · $36k · revenue +71%
- FOFOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $20k · revenue +162%
- SCSouth Carolina Coastal Conservation League Inc7× · 2017–2024 · $12k · revenue +177%
Funded once
- DLD Ladino Alvarezone grant, 2023 · $7k
- LPL PERALTAone grant, 2022 · $5k
- SISPRING ISLAND TRUST FOUNDATION INCone 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.
We harness the power of plants for humankind and share the joy and beauty of tropical gardening with everyone. fairchild tropical botanic garden is a museum of tropical plants within a world famous, 83-acre designed landscape. it was…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
To protect land and water forever, nurture relationships between people and place, and connect conservation to community.
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.
Dedicated to protecting the world's natural environment on behalf of the public by serving as a public interest law firm. refer to schedule o, part iii, line 4a, for list of litigated cases or advocacy work.
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
The mission of the atlantic coast conservancy is to provide 21st century solutions and sound scientific applications for conservation of critical natural resources in the face of a changing climate, focusing on the southeasthern united…
We are a grassroots organization focused on the critical environmental issues of sw florida. we accomplish this through a myriad of efforts by the teams in our programmatic departments: science, policy, education and wildlife…
The north carolina biotechnology center aids the biotechnology-related efforts of researchers, businesses, state and federal governments, and other agencies primarily through awards of grants and loans related to specific programs and…
We work towards a future where birds thrive across the americas because audubon is a powerful, diverse, and ever-growing force for conservation. (continued on schedule o).
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is South Carolina Wildlife Federation and the most unlike its peers is Smithsonian Institution. 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 40 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 17% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 49 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 DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds SPRING ISLAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds South Carolina Coastal Conservation League Inc ↗
- Who funds MUSIC FOR LIFE ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE OF THE MAINLAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD SOUTH ATLANTIC INC ↗
- Who funds HOPEFUL HORIZONS ↗
- Who funds STETSON UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds SPRING ISLAND TRUST FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PORT ROYAL SOUND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE JESSE TREE INC ↗
- Who funds BEAUFORT COUNTY OPEN LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MEMORIAL INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL CRANE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PARKINSON'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PALMETTO ANIMAL LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CAROLINE HOSPICE OF BEAU ↗
- Who funds MIRASOL HEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
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: Community Foundation of the Lowcountry · Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina Inc · Laurel Charitable Trust · Dan and Merrie Boone Foundation Inc · Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation · Amg Charitable Gift Foundation · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Heritage Classic Foundation · The Susan Morrow Legacy Foundation · Worldwide Small Change Foundation Co Roy Kaufmann · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Foundation for the Carolinas
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 Sa Ming 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.
- Stetson University 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.