· Private foundation
Sunshine Polka-Dot 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 $10k7 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $160k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $130k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAN FRANCISCO MARIN FOOD BANK | $80,000 |
| AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE OF MARIN | $50,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO BAYKEEPER | $40,000 |
| REDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK | $40,000 |
| MARIN SCHOOL OF THE ARTS | $25,000 |
| DREW SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| BRANDEIS MARIN | $10,000 |
| 10000 DEGREES | $10,000 |
| BUEN DIA FAMILY SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| WOMENS DAYTIME DROP-IN CENTER | $5,000 |
| MARIN COMMUNITY MUSIC SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL BIRD RESCUE | $5,000 |
| THE MARINE MAMMAL CENTER | $5,000 |
| CENTER FOR DOMESTIC PEACE | $5,000 |
| CONGREGATION BERITH SHALOM | $2,000 |
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, $167k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 71% 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.
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 +70% since the first grant, against -34% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 2 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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- SFSAN FRANCISCO FOOD BANK9× · 2017–2025 · $520k · revenue +74%
- BBaykeeper9× · 2017–2025 · $353k · revenue +151%
- REREDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK6× · 2020–2025 · $160k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $10k
- BABay Area Wilderness Trainingone grant, 2020 · $8k
- SLSONOMA LAND TRUSTgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue +387%
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.
Marin open studios is a non-profit visual arts organization dedicated to engaging and supporting marin county artists and their audiences through events, programs and services. marin open studios champions a diverse and inclusive community…
California Coastkeeper Alliance unites Waterkeeper programs statewide to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
Our mission is to support california farmers and communities by providing farmers markets for our diverse bay area neighborhoods. we do this by operating certified farmers markets in six bay area counties. these farmers markets provide…
The mission of the San Francisco Public Press is to enrich civic life by publishing investigative and solutions journalism that engages diverse audiences and promotes public accountability. The San Francisco Public Press…
Marin academy asks every individual to think, question, and create in an environment of encouragement and compassion, and challenges each person to accept the responsibilities posed by education in a democratic society.
Food Rescue - The Organization rescues excess fresh food from Bay Area businesses, schools and non-profits and immediately delivers the food to safety net partners - such as senior housing centers, after-school programs, and homeless…
Bay Nature connects the people of the San Francisco Bay Area to our natural world and motivates people to solve problems with nature in mind. Our vision is that all people have a close relationship with theirnatural world.
The monterey museum of art cultivates curiosity in the visual arts and engages community with the diversity of california art - past, present, and future.
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,…
Provide continued rehabilitation, hope, and community for people affected by brain injury.
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,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Valley Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Commonweal. 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 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 41 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 SAN FRANCISCO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds Baykeeper ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE OF MARIN ↗
- Who funds Buen Dia Corporation ↗
- Who funds MARIN SCHOOL OF THE ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Center for Domestic Peace ↗
- Who funds THE MARINE MAMMAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds WOMENS DAYTIME DROP-IN CENTER ↗
- Who funds SANDRA J WING HEALING THERAPIES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds 10000 DEGREES ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL BIRD RESCUE ↗
- Who funds DREW SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WE PLAYERS ↗
- Who funds MARIN AGRICULTURAL LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Community Resource Initiative ↗
- Who funds WE FUND A HERO ↗
- Who funds COMMONWEAL ↗
- Who funds MARIN HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ART WORKS DOWNTOWN INC ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds SONOMA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA FIRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA CANCER CONNECTIONS ↗
- Who funds NORTH VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Marin Community Music School ↗
- Who funds DrawBridge ↗
- Who funds NORTH VALLEY ANIMAL DISASTER GROUP ↗
- Who funds THE AFYA FOUNDATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
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: Marin Community Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Dandelion Foundation · McNabb Foundation · The Yelp Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Sunshine Polka-Dot 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 Sunshine Polka-Dot Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sunshine Polka-Dot 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.