· Private foundation
El Gato Channel 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k5 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $216k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER | $37,530 |
| NORTHERN CHUMASH TRIBAL COUNCIL | $20,000 |
| COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL | $17,500 |
| SANTA BARBARA CHANNEL KEEPER | $15,566 |
| SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY | $15,000 |
| SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| LOS PADRES FORESTWATCH | $15,000 |
| LA COLONIA DE EDEN GARDENS INC | $10,000 |
| SB COUNTY ACTION NETWORK | $10,000 |
| CHANNEL ISLANDS RESTORATION | $10,000 |
| PEACE IN A POD MONTESSORI | $10,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA BUCKET BRIGADE | $10,000 |
| LAGUNA BLANCA SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| EXPLORE ECOLOGY | $10,000 |
| COMMUNITY INITIATIVES | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY19–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 93% of your 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.
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 10% of El Gato Channel 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. Read by recipient address, 94% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 89% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +52% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 4 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $36k 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
- EDENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER6× · 2019–2024 · $171k · revenue +34%
- CECOMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL5× · 2020–2024 · $160k · revenue +52%
- SBSANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY5× · 2020–2024 · $90k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- SBSANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISone grant, 2019 · $50k
- IBINTERNATIONAL BIRD RESCUEgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +41%
- CCCENTRAL COAST ALLIANCE UNITone grant, 2022 · $10k
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 institute is dedicated to scientific research, the results of which are used to promote public awareness and education in the areas of conservation biology and ecology,including the wise use of natural resources.
Nature collective's mission is to drive a passion for nature for all. we think inclusively and diversely when serving those devoid of nature those who remember nature and want to connect back to it and those who have an affinity with…
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
To conserve natural resources, agricultural land and open spaces for present and future generations.
Create and publish educational materials, conduct professional development, promote awareness, and sponsor research on the spectacular biological diversity of the State of CA.
The Wildlands Conservancy's dual mission is to preserve the beauty and biodiversity of the earth and to provide programs so that children may know the wonder and joy of nature.
To protect and steward in perpetuity the unique natural, cultural, and asthetic resources of the preserve and serve as a model of ecologically sustainable development to committees outside the preserve.
To mobilize people in local communities around the world to protect marine wildlife and the oceans and inland watersheds that sustain them.
The foundation works with diverse groups representing many interests to acquire and restore critical wildlife habitat and protecting species
California Coastkeeper Alliance unites Waterkeeper programs statewide to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
California ocean science trust (ost) is a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating progress towards a healthy and productive ocean future for california. created by state legislation, ost bridges the gap between cutting-edge…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Explore Ecology and the most unlike its peers is The Riviera Ridge School. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
20 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. 20 of the 32 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 ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA CHANNELKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN CHUMASH TRIBAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Channel Islands Restoration ↗
- Who funds EXPLORE ECOLOGY ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL BIRD RESCUE ↗
- Who funds LOS PADRES FORESTWATCH INC ↗
- Who funds MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Wilderness Youth Project Inc ↗
- Who funds LAGUNA BLANCA SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA BOTANIC GARDEN ↗
- Who funds LA COLONIA DE EDEN GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds The Riviera Ridge School ↗
- Who funds GOOD SAMARITAN SHELTER ↗
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: Santa Barbara Foundation · Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Fund for Santa Barbara Inc · Patricia Bragg Foundation · Emmett Foundation · James S Bower Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · Www Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · The Artemisia Fund · Bragg Health Foundation · The Osherenko-Young 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 El Gato Channel 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 El Gato Channel Foundation?
Find your warmest path to El Gato Channel 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.