· Community foundation
Sonora Area Foundation
Strengthens its community through assisting donors, making grants, and providing leadership.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 58 grants below total $1,513,482 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $2,327,906 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $814,424 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k19 grants · $137k
- $10k–50k29 grants · $580k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $797k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Sierra Bible Church | $103,500 |
| Cornerstone Bible Church | $100,000 |
| Sierra Repertory Theater | $88,250 |
| Interfaith | $85,450 |
| San Joaquin County Office of Educat | $84,737 |
| Columbia College Foundation | $82,000 |
| Sierra Senior Providers | $73,734 |
| Sonora High School | $69,750 |
| Watch Resources Inc | $54,835 |
| Central Sierra Search and Rescue | $54,771 |
| County of Tuolumne | $42,555 |
| Foothill Pregnancy Center | $39,150 |
| Center for a Non Violent Community | $33,878 |
| UC Berkeley Foundation | $32,700 |
| Columbia Union School District | $29,297 |
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 (FY17–24, $610k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 +12% since the first grant, against -6% for the ones you funded once.
59 repeat relationships — 34 still active in FY2024, 25 since wound down; 21 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $290k 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
- SRSIERRA REPERTORY THEATRE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $486k · revenue +30%
- ICINTERFAITH COMMUNITY SOCIAL SERVICES8× · 2017–2024 · $450k · revenue +78% · 33% of their budget
- YSYOUTH SPORTS FOUNDATION OF TUOLUMNE COUNTY2× · 2021–2023 · $302k · revenue +6% · 34% of their budget
Funded once
- SFSymons Family Fundone grant, 2022 · $153k · revenue -41% · 45% of their budget
- BDBIG DREAMS UNIVERSALLY ACCESSIBLEone grant, 2019 · $115k
- WOWORD OF LIFE FELLOWSHIP INCone grant, 2021 · $85k
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.
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,…
To ensure every companion animal has access to quality medical care, compassionate shelter, and a loving home.
Friends of Tulare County is dedicated to promoting the safety, health, and well-being of all residents of Tulare County and strives to assist underrepresented and disadvantaged populations of all ethnicities and cultures through donations,…
At Yosemite Rivers Alliance, we unite conservation and community to protect and restore the three rivers that ?ow through the Yosemite Regionthe Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Merced.
Commitment to the prosperity of tulare county by shaping and steering the workforce development system.
To provide health care for retired k-9 deputies. educate the public in the roll k-9 deputies play in law enforcment
Living Gods love by inspiring health, wholeness and hope.
Animal rescue of abandoned cats and dogs
To protect and preserve natural habitat, open space, and agriculture for people and wildlife that promotes groundwater and environmental sustainability to preserve the farming economy of the southern san joaquin valley for future…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mother Lode Christian School and the most unlike its peers is Tuolumne Safe. 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 31 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 4% 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.
79 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. 79 of the 129 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 SIERRA REPERTORY THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH COMMUNITY SOCIAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds YOUTH SPORTS FOUNDATION OF TUOLUMNE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Columbia College Foundation ↗
- Who funds RESILIENCY VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds Sonora Community Hospital dba Adventist Health Sonora ↗
- Who funds Sierra Senior Providers Inc ↗
- Who funds WATCH RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds Symons Family Fund ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF TUOLUMNE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds FOOTHILL PREGNANCY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MOTHER LODE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Center for a Non Violent Community ↗
- Who funds SPIRITUAL ROADS INC ↗
- Who funds KEITH DALE WANN POST NO4748 VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE USA ↗
- Who funds SIERRA WALDORF SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE ANIMAL COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN TUOLUMNE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Idaho State University Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds AMADOR TUOLUMNE COMMUNITY RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds Nancys Hope Community Closet ↗
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: Irving J Symons Foundation · Sonora Community Hospital dba Adventist Health Sonora · Symons Family Fund · California Fire Foundation · Public Health Institute · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Sonora Area 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.
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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.
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Find your warmest path to Sonora Area 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.