· Private foundation
Syar Foundation Susan L Syar Director
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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 61% of SYAR FOUNDATION SUSAN L SYAR DIRECTOR’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $24k
- $10k–50k29 grants · $661k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $133k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FIRST 5 SOLANO (CHILD START INC) | $1,000,000 |
| ACCESS ADVENTURE | $82,500 |
| VACAVILLE BOYS & GIRLS CLUB | $50,000 |
| CANINE COMPANIONS FOR INDEPENDENCE | $45,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $40,000 |
| VIA HEART PROJECT (NAPA POLICE DEPARTMENT) | $37,650 |
| SHARE THE CARE NAPA VALLEY | $35,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $30,000 |
| VOENA | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| SPIRITHORSE RIDING CENTER | $25,000 |
| HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION NORTHERN SONOMA | $25,000 |
| NAPA EMERGENCY WOMEN'S SERVICES (NEWS) | $25,000 |
| COPE FAMILY CENTER | $25,000 |
| LA LUZ CENTER | $25,000 |
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, $521k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 30% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +48% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
66 repeat relationships — 25 still active in FY2024, 41 since wound down; 13 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, 34% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.2M 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
- CFCope Family Center8× · 2017–2024 · $210k · revenue +29%
- TVTHE VACAVILLE NEIGHBORHOOD BOYS & GIRLS CLUB4× · 2019–2024 · $165k · revenue +144%
- YFYOLO FOOD BANK4× · 2019–2023 · $155k · revenue +99%
Funded once
- SESOLANO EDC (ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORP)one grant, 2022 · $50k
- SSSUTTER SOLANO MEDICAL CENTERone grant, 2022 · $25k
- SASUISUN AMERICAN LITTLE LEAGUEone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +7% · 28% of their budget
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 Sonoma County Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) Program serves abused and neglected children coming before the Juvenile Court of Protection and Rehabilitation Services.
Address the homeless crisis in California.
Sonoma Valley Health and recreation Association (Sonoma Splash) is dedicated to providing a sustainable state of the art multi-use aquatic and recreation facility accessible to all Sonoma Valley residents for aquatic education and safety,…
Solano Family & Children's Services promotes and advocates for the well-being of children, their families, and child care providers by offering access to a variety of child care resources.
Homes for Sonoma is a nonprofit developer creating quality workforce housing options that support safe and sustainable community, and finds efficient, scalable solutions to address the housing crisis in Sonoma County and throughout…
Puertas Abiertas is a trusted home and advocate that strengthens the Latino Community through multicultural programs and services.
NAMI Sonoma County's mission is to build better lives for individuals and families affected by mental illness throughout Sonoma County by providing education, support, and advocacy.
Northern Valley Harm Reduction Coalition is a 501c3 Non-Profit and Physician Lead Harm Reduction Program. Our program provides life saving Naloxone, Overdose Reversal Training, Safe Use Supplies, Syringe Disposal, HIV/HCV Testing, Drug…
MISSION STATEMENT: MISSION: CARING FOR OUR PATIENTS FIRST AND OUR PEOPLE ALWAYS. VISION: TO BE THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE, INTEGRATED AND CONNECTED HEALTH SYSTEM FOR GETTING AND STAYING WELL. VALUES: EXCELLENCE - We deliver high-quality,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Shelter Solano Inc and the most unlike its peers is American Diabetes Association. 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 30 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
66 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 66 of the 121 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 Cope Family Center ↗
- Who funds ACCESS ADVENTURE ↗
- Who funds VOENA ↗
- Who funds THE VACAVILLE NEIGHBORHOOD BOYS & GIRLS CLUB ↗
- Who funds YOLO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds BOYS CLUB OF NAPA INC BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF NAPA VALLEY ↗
- Who funds SOLANO COALITION FOR BETTER HEALTH ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HEALTH INITIATIVE NAPA COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds Community Resources for Children ↗
- Who funds Share the Care Napa Valley ↗
- Who funds CANINE COMPANIONS FOR INDEPENDENCE INC ↗
- Who funds FAIRFIELD COMMUNITY SERVICES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CASA of Solano County ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY VALLEJO COMMUNITY SUPPORT SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds NEWS ↗
- Who funds SQUARE PEG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds B WALKER RANCH ↗
- Who funds Center for Volunteer & Nonprofit Leadership ↗
- Who funds Childrens Network of Solano County ↗
- Who funds SUTTER BAY HOSPITALS ↗
- Who funds BAY AREA COMMUNITY RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds THE CERES COMMUNITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds HANDS ACROSS THE VALLEY INC GEORGE ALTAMURA SR ↗
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: Community Foundation of the Napa Valley · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · McNabb Foundation · Peter a & Vernice H Gasser Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Travis Credit Union's Community Financial Wellness Fund · Solano Community Foundation · Craig and Kathryn Hall Foundation · California Foundation for Stronger Communities · Napa Valley Vintners Healthy Community Fund · Sonoma County Community Foundation · The California Wellness 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 Syar Foundation Susan L Syar Director 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.
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