· Private foundation
Sunlight Giving
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
- Under $10k7 grants · $44k
- $10k–50k120 grants · $3.3M
- $50k–250k195 grants · $17M
- $250k+10 grants · $2.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LIFEMOVES | $350,000 |
| SECOND HARVEST OF SILICON VALLEY | $350,000 |
| THE ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC | $300,000 |
| VALLEY HEALTH FOUNDATION | $275,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD MAR MONTE INC | $275,000 |
| FOOD BANK OF CONTRA COSTA AND SOLANO | $250,000 |
| FIRST 5 SANTA CLARA COUNTY | $250,000 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK SANTA CRUZ COUNTY | $250,000 |
| ABODE SERVICES | $250,000 |
| FOOD BANK FOR MONTEREY COUNTY | $250,000 |
| GOLDEN VALLEY HEALTH CENTERS FOUNDATION | $235,000 |
| CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF FOOD BANKS | $200,000 |
| KIDANGO INC | $200,000 |
| CALIFORNIA PRIMARY CARE ASSOCIATION | $200,000 |
| SACRED HEART COMMUNITY SERVICE | $200,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $22.8M) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 52% 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.
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 +84% since the first grant, against +6% for the ones you funded once.
325 repeat relationships — 286 still active in FY2024, 39 since wound down; 3 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100k 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
PLANNED PARENTHOOD MAR MONTE INC7× · 2017–2024 · $3.5M · revenue +37%- ASABODE SERVICES7× · 2017–2024 · $3.2M · revenue +240%
- LLIFEMOVES7× · 2017–2024 · $3.1M · revenue +186%
Funded once
- SHSECOND HARVEST FOOD BANKone grant, 2017 · $1.5M
Public Health Instituteone grant, 2021 · $1.0M · revenue +6%- GVGOLDEN VALLEY HEALTH CENTERSgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $200k · revenue +150%
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.
Improve the quality of life for individuals in Alameda County, Contra Costa County, Solano County, Monterey County, Sacramento County and the surrounding area in the State of California.
HAC assists homeless and mentally ill clients in the long and difficult process of becoming eligible for SSI and MediCal benefits. HAC provides assistance with other public benefits that clients need in the interim to survive until their…
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,…
By advocating for quality early care and education, empowering families with information and financial support, and building the capabilities of educators, Children's Council of San Francisco ensures that every child in San Francisco has…
FVLC helps diverse communities in Alameda County heal from domestic violence and sexual assault, advocating for justice and healthy relationships. We provide survivor-centered legal and crisis intervention services, offer prevention for…
We make it possible for people in marin to achieve well-being by providing the vital services they need. together, we break down the barriers that get in the way of fair and lasting change in service to better outcomes for all.
The Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco is dedicated to combating the displacement crisis gripping our city by building the power of working-class tenants of color to take on the real estate industry and win housing justice for all.…
Independent nonpartisan newsroom serving Santa Cruz County, California we are all watching and engaged in our local government, our needs are addressed, democracy works better and our community is stronger.
California Donor Table anchors a hub of donors, foundations, and community leaders. We pool together our resources to shape California into a truly democratic state that works for the people, not the powerful. Rooted in our commitment to…
San Francisco CASA transforms the lives of children and youth traumatized and displaced in the foster care and related systems by providing one consistent, caring volunteer advocate, trained to address each childs needs in the court and…
Unitedly is a nonprofit organization based in San Mateo County, California. Unitedly was established to ensure Asian families and communities have access to equitable opportunities and resources to thrive in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The California Center for Movement Legal Services (Movement Legal) provides legal services in the pursuit of improving the lives of California's traditionally underserved residents, carrying out legal work that fosters community led policy…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is El Concilio California and the most unlike its peers is Children's Hospital & Research Center At Oakland. 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 34 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
328 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. 328 of the 384 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 PLANNED PARENTHOOD MAR MONTE INC ↗
- Who funds ABODE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds LIFEMOVES ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST OF SILICON VALLEY ↗
- Who funds ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK FOR MONTEREY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK SANTA CRUZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds VALLEY HEALTH FOUNDATION (VHF) ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF CONTRA COSTA AND SOLANO ↗
- Who funds SACRED HEART COMMUNITY SERVICE ↗
- Who funds THE MERCED COUNTY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN HOUSE ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF FOOD BANKS ↗
- Who funds EL CONCILIO CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST OF THE GREATER VALLEY ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOOD BANK OF SAN BENITO COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Kidango Inc ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA PRIMARY CARE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN VALLEY HEALTH CENTERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FAITH IN THE VALLEY ↗
- Who funds Community Bridges ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA RURAL LEGAL ASSISTANCE INC ↗
- Who funds HOMEFIRST SERVICES OF SANTA CLARA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Destination Home SV co Silicon Valley Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds East Bay Agency for Children ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SUPPORTIVE HOUSING INC ↗
- Who funds LA CLINICA DE LA RAZA INC ↗
- Who funds San Mateo County Health Foundation ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY MEDICAL CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA LEGAL AID ↗
- Who funds South County Community Health Center Inc dba Ravenswood Family Health Center ↗
- Who funds GARDNER FAMILY HEALTH NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTH COUNTY COMMUNITY SERVICES fka ST JOSEPHS FAMILY CENTER ↗
- Who funds Nourish California ↗
- Who funds Silicon Valley Community Foundation ↗
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: Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · East Bay Community Foundation · United Way of the Bay Area · The Sobrato Family Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · Sutter Bay Hospitals · California Physicians' Service Fdn Dba Blue Shield of California Fdn · The California Wellness Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · The California Endowment · Philanthropic Ventures Foundation · San Jose Mercury News Wish Book Fund 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 Sunlight Giving 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 Sunlight Giving?
Find your warmest path to Sunlight Giving 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.