· Private foundation
Surtman Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k17 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $53k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $203k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LIBERTY LIVE CHURCH | $102,500 |
| RECOVERY ALIVE | $50,000 |
| BROKEN CHAINS MINISTRY | $50,000 |
| ACLU FOUNDATION | $38,000 |
| LIBERTY BAPTIST CHURCH | $15,250 |
| EMOTIONAL RECOVERY CLINIC | $6,150 |
| CALVARY ROAD BAPTIST CHURCH | $5,000 |
| DESTINY FAMILY CENTER | $5,000 |
| RAICES | $2,500 |
| DAVIDSON COMMUNITY PLAYERS | $2,500 |
| PENINSULA RESCUE MISSION | $2,000 |
| VETERANS YOGA PROJECT | $1,000 |
| BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| EAST LINCOLN CHRISTIAN MINISTRY | $1,000 |
| GREEN ROOM COMMUNITY THEATRE | $1,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $13k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 42% 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 +50% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
33 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 6 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $63k 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
- PRPENINSULA RESCUE MISSION INC4× · 2020–2025 · $75k · revenue +50%
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC6× · 2020–2025 · $62k · revenue +65%- AEAlameda Emergency Food DBA Alameda Food Bank3× · 2017–2021 · $27k · revenue +143%
Funded once
- RARECOVERY ALIVE INCone grant, 2024 · $30k · revenue 0%
UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEFone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue -21%- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $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.
USA for UNHCR protects and supports refugees by mobilizing resources, elevating awareness, and driving action through a network of engaged supporters.
Ummah relief international is a dedicated grassroots relief organization providing humanitarian services to bring help and hope to thousands of victims of natural and human disasters with quick and targeted action.
To resource, train, and mobilize volunteers, churches,& other organizations to respond to disasters in the united states & world-wide
Relief international (ri) partners with communities impacted by conflict, climate change, and disaster to save lives, build greater resilience, and promote long-term health and wellbeing of people in the communities that we serve. relief…
International relief teams is a non-profit international relief and development organization dedicated to allieviating human suffering by providing critical assistance to victims of disaster, profound poverty and neglect worldwide
To enhance the protection of rights of the displaced worldwide by the provision of advice and assistance on the application of international law, the conducting of research on the interpretation and application of international law and the…
Refugepoint partners with refugees to access life-changing solutions and transforms how the world supports them. refugepoint seeks to expand access to lasting solutions for refugees, especially those facing vulnerabilities who are…
Serving the displaced in the middle east.
U.s. digital response is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps governments, nonprofits, and public entities respond quickly to critical public needs. the organization serves the public by leveraging a network of pro bono…
During the past year we provided humanitarian aid to more than 50,000 people in communities across Ukraine. We provided food, medicine, medical care, programs for children, lodging, counseling and much more. These efforts were carried out…
URF is a 501(c)(30 nonprofit based in California. We receive funds through private donations and spend them on several programs, providing aid, rescue, and relief for Ukrainian war victims in the form of cash donations for food, shelter,…
To save lives & relieve suffering through health interventions & related activities that strengthen communities affected by conflict, natural disasters & disease outbreaks.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The New Horizons Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Island Dog Rescue. 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 38 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 71 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 PENINSULA RESCUE MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MOTORCYCLE MISSIONARY ↗
- Who funds RECOVERY ALIVE INC ↗
- Who funds Alameda Emergency Food DBA Alameda Food Bank ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds Davidson Community Players ↗
- Who funds ISLAND DOG RESCUE ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE & IMMIGRANT CENTER FOR EDUCATION & LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds TRIPLE TREE AERODROME INC ↗
- Who funds THE GREEN ROOM COMMUNITY THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds ISLE OF WIGHT CHRISTIAN OUTREACH PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EMOTIONAL RECOVERY CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds RECOVERY & RESTORATION MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds VETERANS YOGA PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds Lake Merritt Institute ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF THE BAY AREA ↗
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: Foundation for the Carolinas · Duke Energy Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Charities Aid Foundation America · American Endowment Foundation · Network for Good · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Surtman 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.