· Private foundation
Samantha and Darren Bechtel Family 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k12 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $145k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $250k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ELIZABETHS SMILE FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| CALIFORNIA LIVER INSTITUTE | $100,000 |
| LONE MOUNTAIN CHILDRENS CENTER INC | $50,000 |
| THACHER SCHOOL INC | $50,000 |
| THE EXPLORATORIUM | $50,000 |
| THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY | $30,000 |
| THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY | $30,000 |
| THE EXPLORATORIUM | $25,000 |
| MARIN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVANCY | $25,000 |
| TIPPING POINT COMMUNITY | $10,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO OPERA ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| CITY OF ST HELENA | $5,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| THE BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF ST HELENA AND CALISTOGA | $5,000 |
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 (FY22–24, $150k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 23% of Samantha and Darren Bechtel Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 73% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 65% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
10 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 1 since wound down; 10 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $133k 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
- TTThe Thacher School Inc7× · 2017–2024 · $345k · revenue +32%
- TETHE EXPLORATORIUM4× · 2021–2024 · $225k · revenue +33%
- LMLONE MOUNTAIN CHILDREN'S CENTER INC3× · 2022–2024 · $150k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- TCTHE CALIFORNIA LIVER INSTITUTEone grant, 2022 · $100k
- TFTHE FOUNDATION AT SAINT JOSEPH'S ARTS SOCIETYone grant, 2018 · $12k
- SHSt Helena Hospital Foundationone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue +5%
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 museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
Nurture empathy and connection by engaging communities with socially relevant contemporary art
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
The museum's mission is to inspire all californians to create a more vibrant future for themselves and their communities. through collections, exhibitions, education programs, and public dialogue, we inspire people of all ages and…
The asian art museum celebrates, preserves, and promotes asian and asian american art and cultures for local and global audiences. we provide a dynamic forum for exchanging ideas, inviting collaboration, and fueling imagination to deepen…
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
To inspire, educate and cultivate curiosity through great works of art.
The monterey museum of art cultivates curiosity in the visual arts and engages community with the diversity of california art - past, present, and future.
The huntington library, art museum, and botanical gardens shares its world-renowned collections to support scholarship, foster learning, inspire creativity, and offer transformative experiences for diverse audiences.
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Francisco Zoological Society and the most unlike its peers is St Helena Hospital Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 41 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 30% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 26 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 ELIZABETH'S SMILE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Thacher School Inc ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE EXPLORATORIUM ↗
- Who funds LONE MOUNTAIN CHILDREN'S CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ↗
- Who funds MARIN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CORPORATION OF THE FINE ARTS MUSEUMS ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds TIPPING POINT COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds St Helena Hospital Foundation ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF ST HELENA AND CALISTOGA INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR FAMILY PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds Children of Shelters ↗
- Who funds HEADLANDS CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART SAN FRANCISCO ↗
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: American Endowment Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · The San Francisco Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Samantha and Darren Bechtel Family 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 Samantha and Darren Bechtel Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Samantha and Darren Bechtel Family 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.