· Private foundation
Sykes Family 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
77% of Sykes Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to The Board Of Trustees Of The Leland Stanford Junior University, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 9 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year Sykes Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 11 organizations, $3M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k13 grants · $26k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $250k
- $250k+4 grants · $3.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| USC UNIVERSITY | $2,005,000 |
| JONSSON CANCER CENTER FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| THE MARLBOROUGH SCHOOL | $250,000 |
| HARVARD-WESTLAKE SCHOOL | $250,000 |
| THE PARISH OF ST MATHEWS | $200,000 |
| COMMON SENSE MEDIA | $50,000 |
| PACIFIC COUNCIL ON INTERNATIONAL POLICY | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF OREGON | $20,000 |
| LAS MADRINAS PEDIATRIC SIMULATION RESEARCH | $7,500 |
| KUKI'O COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| KENT SCHOOL | $3,000 |
| THE DELPHIC CLUB TRUST | $3,000 |
| USET FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| TELLURIDE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT | $1,000 |
| EKWANOK SCHOLARSHIP TRUST | $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 (FY23–23, $30k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% 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.
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 +28% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2021, 6 since wound down; 55 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 24% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $349k 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
- HSHARVARD-WESTLAKE SCHOOL2× · 2021–2022 · $500k · revenue +2%
- MSMARLBOROUGH SCHOOL2× · 2021–2022 · $500k · revenue +12%
- LMLAS MADRINAS4× · 2021–2024 · $63k · revenue +28%
Funded once
- UUUSC UNIVERSITYone grant, 2021 · $2.0M
- TJTHE JONSSON CANCER CENTER FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $500k · revenue +8%
COMMUNITY INITIATIVESone grant, 2025 · $250k · revenue 0%
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 ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
The mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.
The Television Academy is dedicated to celebrating excellence, innovation and the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences through recognition, education and leadership, while fostering a diverse, inclusive and accessible…
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
Enhance the ability of actec members to provide the most efficient and highest quality services to their clients; develop qualified trust and estate counselors; improve and reform probate, trust and tax laws, procedures, and standards of…
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
To inform and enrich the intellectual lives of 20,000 alumni of harvard university in the washington, dc area and to assist harvard university with respect to applicants and undergraduates from the dc area.
The association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
The uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
A diverse and sustainable learning community dedicated to discovery and excellence in teaching, scholarship and practice, pacific university inspires students to think, care, create and pursue justice in our world.
See schedule oustelecom exists to ensure members can compete, grow and thrive to build a world where families, enterprises and communities are connected through the power of broadband.our member companies have committed a considerable…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Policylink and the most unlike its peers is Bel-Air Bay Club Charitable Fund. 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 30 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) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
43 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. 43 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 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds HARVARD-WESTLAKE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE JONSSON CANCER CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MARLBOROUGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT COMMISSION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAS MADRINAS ↗
- Who funds TARGET ALS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds POLICYLINK ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC COUNCIL ON INTERNATIONAL POLICY ↗
- Who funds Angel City Alliance ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE SAM CULLEN MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INTERLOCHEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE BRIANNA KUPFER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES POLICE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DORSET HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds EKWANOK SCHOLARSHIP TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds SOL-LA MUSIC ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds LYMPHOMA RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FORE YOUTH GOLF FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ADVENTURE TRAVEL CONSERVATION FUND ↗
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: The Goldman Sachs Charitable Gift Fund · The Ralph M Parsons Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · California Community Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund
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 Sykes Family 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Vermont Symphony Orchestra Association Inc — 11% of income from government
- The Harvard Krokodiloes Inc — 7% of income from government
- Southern Oregon University Foundation — 0% of income from government
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 Sykes Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sykes Family 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.