· Private foundation
Sand Hill Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k24 grants · $93k
- $10k–50k33 grants · $817k
- $50k–250k37 grants · $2.9M
- $250k+5 grants · $7.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LUCILE PACKARD FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH | $5,000,000 |
| BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY | $1,000,000 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED | $600,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HEALTH COUNCIL INC | $300,000 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED | $250,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HEALTH COUNCIL INC | $200,000 |
| FRIENDS FOR YOUTH INC | $200,000 |
| JEFFERSON UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT | $200,000 |
| LIFEMOVES | $160,000 |
| SAVE THE BAY | $125,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE PENINSULA | $100,000 |
| PENINSULA BRIDGE PROGRAM | $100,000 |
| PUENTE DE LA COSTA SUR | $85,000 |
| PIE RANCH | $75,000 |
| PENINSULA CONFLICT RESOLUTION CENTER | $75,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of Sand Hill 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +43% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
102 repeat relationships — 68 still active in FY2024, 34 since wound down; 9 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $261k 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
- LPLUCILE PACKARD FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH5× · 2020–2024 · $5.8M · revenue +8%
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED5× · 2020–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +121%- CHCHILDREN'S HEALTH COUNCIL INC5× · 2020–2024 · $2.0M · revenue +38%
Funded once
- SMSAN MATEO RESOURCE CONSERVATION DISTRICTone grant, 2020 · $100k
- HFHABITAT FOR HUMANITY GREATER SAN FRANCISCOone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue -35%
- ALAYUDANDO LATINOS A SOARone grant, 2023 · $80k
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 Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
California Coastkeeper Alliance unites Waterkeeper programs statewide to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
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.
Unitedly is a nonprofit organization based in San Mateo County, California. Unitedly was established to ensure Asian families and communities have access to equitable opportunities and resources to thrive in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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,…
San Francisco CASA transforms the lives of children and youth traumatized and displaced in the foster care and related systems by providing one consistent, caring volunteer advocate, trained to address each childs needs in the court and…
SF Partnership is an organization comprised of SF's leading employers dedicated to supporting an equitable, resilient, and vibrant economy shared by all people working and living in San Francisco. Through education, advocacy, and research,…
PPS-SF's mission is to promote the fundamental value of public education and pursue the success of every public school by sharing knowledge, bridging communities, and informing policy.
California Donor Table anchors a hub of donors, foundations, and community leaders. We pool together our resources to shape California into a truly democratic state that works for the people, not the powerful. Rooted in our commitment to…
By advocating for quality early care and education, empowering families with information and financial support, and building the capabilities of educators, Children's Council of San Francisco ensures that every child in San Francisco has…
Who we are - silicon valley education foundation (svef) focuses on raising student performance in the critical areas of math and science across all 33 santa clara county school districts, and also adjoining san mateo and alameda counties.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Center for Excellence in Nonprofits and the most unlike its peers is Project Safety Net. 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 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
163 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. 163 of the 178 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 LUCILE PACKARD FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HEALTH COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds PIE RANCH ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS FOR YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds LIFEMOVES ↗
- Who funds MILL CREEK METROPARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA OPEN SPACE TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE PENINSULA BRIDGE PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE PENINSULA ↗
- Who funds Save The Bay ↗
- Who funds CURIODYSSEY ↗
- Who funds Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center ↗
- Who funds DEPLOYUS INC ↗
- Who funds ONE LIFE COUNSELING CENTER ↗
- Who funds Ten Strands ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLIER ↗
- Who funds ADOLESCENT COUNSELING SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Upward Scholars ↗
- Who funds KARA ↗
- Who funds COUNSELING AND SUPPORT SERVICES FOR YOUTH ↗
- Who funds DALY CITY PENINSULA PARTNERSHIP COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF SAN FRANCISCO ↗
- Who funds VIDA VERDE NATURE EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County ↗
- Who funds StarVista ↗
- Who funds JOBTRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds California School-Age Consortium Inc ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA CONFLICT RESOLUTION CENTER ↗
- Who funds Canopy ↗
- Who funds The Peninsula College Fund ↗
- Who funds PUENTE DE LA COSTA SUR ↗
- Who funds CORA Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse ↗
- Who funds Human Investment Project Inc ↗
- Who funds ACKNOWLEDGE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds ALAS AYUDANDO LATINOS A SONAR ↗
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: Atkinson Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · The Sobrato Family Foundation · The Palo Alto Community Fund · Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation · Bothin Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Philanthropic Ventures Foundation · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · The San Francisco Foundation · The Grove Foundation · Sunlight Giving
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 Sand Hill 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 Sand Hill Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sand Hill 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.