· Private foundation
Scholes Family 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
100% of Scholes Family 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 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year Scholes Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 16 organizations, $177k. 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.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k18 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $13k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $150k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| University of Chicago | $150,000 |
| Stanford University | $12,500 |
| Sequoia High School Education Foundation | $3,750 |
| New York University | $2,500 |
| EdChoice | $1,000 |
| San Carlos Educational Foundation | $1,000 |
| Whitman College | $1,000 |
| Second Harvest Food Bank | $1,000 |
| Washington University | $500 |
| Central Arroyo PTA | $500 |
| Parks and Recreation Foundation of San Carlos | $500 |
| Peninsula Temple Beth El | $500 |
| San Carlos Children's Theater | $500 |
| Red Cross | $500 |
| CATO Institute | $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 (FY18–23, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 55% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
29 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2021, 11 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $500 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
- SLSIMONS LAUFER MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES INSTITUTE4× · 2017–2020 · $30k · revenue +22%
- SHSequoia High School Education Foundation7× · 2017–2023 · $25k · revenue +53%
- BOBOARD OF TRUSTEES OF WHITMAN COLLEGE7× · 2017–2023 · $9k · revenue +87%
Funded once
- HRHIV Resource Consortium Inc dba Tulsa CARESgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $3k · revenue +147%
- JFJEWISH FAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICE INCone grant, 2017 · $500 · revenue +20%
- RIRESURGE INTERNATIONALgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $500 · revenue +64%
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 central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…
The mission of southern california university of health sciences (scu) is to educate students as competent, caring and successful practitioners of integrative healthcare. the university is committed to providing excellence in academics,…
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)
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
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."
Organization's mission ====================== the university of california, san francisco(ucsf) is among the world's leading universities dedicated to advancing health worldwide through biomedical research, graduate-level education in the…
As a leading research university with a distinctive commitment to undergraduate education, Rice University aspires to path breaking research, unsurpassed teaching, and contributions to the betterment of our world. It seeks to fulfill this…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
The trustees of the university of pennsylvania (the "university") sees itself as having a public service mission. in such regard, the university aims to provide a rich and diverse educational environment for its students; to pioneer…
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.…
See Form 990, Part I, Line 1, Description of Organization Mission.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is March of Dimes Inc and the most unlike its peers is San Carlos Parks & Recreation Foundation. 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.
42 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. 42 of the 56 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 University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SIMONS LAUFER MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Sequoia High School Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF WHITMAN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SAN CARLOS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA OPEN SPACE TRUST ↗
- Who funds SAN CARLOS CHILDRENS THEATER ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds HIV Resource Consortium Inc dba Tulsa CARES ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST OF SILICON VALLEY ↗
- Who funds EdChoice Inc ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds StarVista ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds ROBIN HOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds San Carlos Parks & Recreation Foundation ↗
- Who funds Community Foundation of San Carlos ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN HOUSE ↗
- Who funds ECUMENICAL HUNGER PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds SUTTER BAY MEDICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HEALTH COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Samaritan House Inc ↗
- Who funds Museum of Modern Art ↗
- Who funds BABY2BABY ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY & CHILDREN'S SERVICE 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: Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc
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 Scholes 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.
- American Academy of Arts & Sciences — 3% of income from government
- Jewish Family & Children's Service Inc — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Scholes Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Scholes 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.