· Private foundation
Severns 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.
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 · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $215k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $495k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Benetech | $85,000 |
| Reading Partners | $80,000 |
| Second Harvest | $75,000 |
| Tipping Point Community | $55,000 |
| Pangea Legal Services | $50,000 |
| Humane Society Silicon Valley | $50,000 |
| Teach For America - Bay Area | $50,000 |
| 826 Valencia | $50,000 |
| NorCal Resist | $40,000 |
| Sunnyvale Community Services | $30,000 |
| WWRAP - Womens Repro Rights Assist | $25,000 |
| Jewish Family Community Services-EB | $15,000 |
| LYRIC Lavender Youth Rec Info Cente | $15,000 |
| ACLU Foundation | $10,000 |
| SPARC - Shakespeare's Associates | $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 (FY17–25, $948k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 3% 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.
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.
31 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 7 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, 72% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $205k 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
- HSHUMANE SOCIETY SILICON VALLEY9× · 2017–2025 · $730k · revenue +55%
- RPREADING PARTNERS9× · 2017–2025 · $685k · revenue +1%
- 8V826 Valencia9× · 2017–2025 · $630k · revenue +261%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $50k
- GNGROUNDSWELL NETWORK INCone grant, 2024 · $50k
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVEone grant, 2020 · $20k · revenue -63%
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.
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,…
For more than five decades, public advocates has challenged the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing,…
The Legal Aid Association of California, the statewide membership of legal services nonprofits, serves its members through advocacy and other support in efforts to provide legal assistance to low-income Californians and ensure access to…
The american civil liberties union of northern california (aclu nc union) defends and advances the principles of freedom, equality and justice contained in the united states constitution. aclu nc union, a california mutual benefit…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
Our mission is to accelerate scientific progress, understand the root causes of disease, and narrow the gap between discoveries and impact on patients.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
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,…
The bar association of san francisco champions equal access to justice and promotes humanity, excellence, and diversity in the legal profession. we provide legal services to disadvantaged and underserved individuals in san francisco. we…
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
See schedule okqed serves the people of northern california with a community-supported alternative to commercial media, providing the knowledge needed to make informed decisions; convening community dialogue; bringing the arts to everyone;…
Our mission is to advance and protect the rights, dignity, and health of people living with hiv/aids in the bay area. continued on schedule owe accomplish this through direct legal representation by one of our staff attorneys, by careful…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Tipping Point Community and the most unlike its peers is Computer History Museum. 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 29 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 47 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 HUMANE SOCIETY SILICON VALLEY ↗
- Who funds READING PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds 826 Valencia ↗
- Who funds BENEFICENT TECHNOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds SUNNYVALE COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CARE HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds SHAKESPEARE'S ASSOCIATES INC ↗
- Who funds San Jose Grail Family Services ↗
- Who funds San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds TIPPING POINT COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds Pangea Legal Services ↗
- Who funds GROUNDSWELL NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds MALDEF - MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND ↗
- Who funds NorCal Resist ↗
- Who funds Vote Solar ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE & RELATED DISORDERS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE BRIGID ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds Zambia Wildlife and Community Foundation (FKA Friends of Charity Begins at Home) ↗
- Who funds JET CITY ROLLERDERBY ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds KRISTI YAMAGUCHI'S ALWAYS DREAM ↗
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 Grove Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Tides Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Severns 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.