· Private foundation
Stephen M Silberstein 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 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.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k11 grants · $220k
- $50k–250k31 grants · $3.2M
- $250k+5 grants · $5.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MCF DONOR ADVISED FUND | $4,000,000 |
| MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA | $350,000 |
| AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION | $300,000 |
| NATIONAL VOTE AT HOME INSTITUTE | $250,000 |
| PROPUBLICA | $250,000 |
| SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION | $200,000 |
| DEMOCRACY NOW | $200,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FOUNDATION | $200,000 |
| NATIONAL REDISTRICTING FOUNDATION | $200,000 |
| CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS | $150,000 |
| ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE | $150,000 |
| COMMON CAUSE | $150,000 |
| INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES | $150,000 |
| INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH ON PRESIDENTAL ELECTIONS | $140,000 |
| AMERICAN INDEPENDENT FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $183k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 41% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +48% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
70 repeat relationships — 41 still active in FY2024, 29 since wound down; 6 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $545k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY FOUNDATION3× · 2018–2023 · $8.0M · revenue +99%
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC8× · 2017–2024 · $6.5M · revenue +102%- MMMEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA8× · 2017–2024 · $3.0M · revenue +90%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $1.0M
- ABAMERICAN BRIDGE ASSOCIATION AND CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $250k
- OMOakland Museum of Californiaone grant, 2019 · $250k
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 union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The foreign policy research institute (frpi) is dedicated to producing the highest quality scholarship and nonpartisan policy analysis focused on crucial foreign policy and national security challenges facing the united states. we educate…
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,…
To teach and disseminate educational materials to the public.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
Represent members and cal employers to members of cal legislature and other agencies of state government through in-house legislative analysts, lobbying staff, and contract lobbyists. cal chamber publishes books and software related to…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Providing research, education and practical information all aimed at optimizing newspapers' business operations, deepening their community engagement and enhancing the quality of their journalism.
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;…
Using legal advocacy to make advances in science and technology safer for people and the planet.
The nonpartisan campaign legal center advances democracy through law at the federal, state and local levels, fighting for every american's rights to responsive government and a fair opportunity to participate in and affect the democratic…
Preservation of civil liberties through litigation and public education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is As You Sow and the most unlike its peers is Stagebridge. 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 26 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
85 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. 85 of the 112 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 CALIFORNIA BERKELEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds PRO PUBLICA INC ↗
- Who funds AS YOU SOW ↗
- Who funds DEMOCRACY NOW PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds National Vote At Home Institute ↗
- Who funds Foundation for the Future of Literature and Literacy dba Bay Area Book Festival ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL REDISTRICTING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Center for Political Accountability ↗
- Who funds Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC CITIZEN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON MONTHLY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds INEQUALITY MEDIA ↗
- Who funds Save The Bay ↗
- Who funds GREENBELT ALLIANCEPEOPLE FOR OPEN SPACE ↗
- Who funds OUTDOOR AFRO ↗
- Who funds GREEN SCIENCE POLICY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE ON TAXATION AND ECONOMIC POLICY ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR STUDY OF RESPONSIVE LAW ↗
- Who funds GOOD JOBS FIRST ↗
- Who funds THE ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MILITARY RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Berkeley Public Library Foundation ↗
- Who funds CORNERSTONES OF SCIENCE ↗
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: The San Francisco Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · Hopewell Fund · Tides Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · The Leonard & Sophie Davis Fund · Impactassetsinc · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · The Ford Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Lisa & Douglas Goldman Fund · Leonard & Beryl Buck 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 Stephen M Silberstein 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.