· Public charity
Symons Family Fund
The Mission of the Symons Family Fund is to benefit, perform the functions of, and carry out the purposes of the Sonora Area Foundation that engage in charitable activities which benefit the residents of Tuolumne County, California.
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.
The 5 grants below total $78,865 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $297,583 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $218,718 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $6k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $73k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Tuolumne County Super of Schools | $31,575 |
| Sonora Foursquare Church | $20,000 |
| Sonora Area Foundation | $11,250 |
| Family Protection Ministries | $10,000 |
| Jamestown Elementary School | $6,040 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 99% of your 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 +117% since the first grant, against -28% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 2 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, 56% 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
- MLMOTHER LODE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL3× · 2017–2019 · $263k · revenue +117%
- RZRAVI ZACHARIAS INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES4× · 2017–2020 · $235k
- TCTuolumne County Superintenden8× · 2017–2024 · $182k
Funded once
- VIVidanet Incone grant, 2017 · $33k · revenue -28%
- ICINTERFAITH COMMUNITY SOCIAL SERVICESone grant, 2023 · $26k · revenue +15%
- CCCALVARY CHAPEL SONORAone grant, 2020 · $25k
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.
Tcs is an independent christian school that prepares young men and women for college and life by providing challenging opportunities to excel in the vital areas of faith, virtue and knowledge.
Faith Based Educational Services for All Grades in a School Setting.
We want our students to know Jesus and be loved. UCS nutures each one to grow their faith and excel academically through Christ-centerd, Bible-based instruction.
Tri-Cities Center for Christian Counseling strives to be a grace in truth counseling ministry committed to providing help, hope and healing to hurting people with the love of christ through competent and compassionate soul care.
The church or ministry trains and equips believers as leaders who can carry the ministry of the church and the Gospel of Jesus Christo into the world and to those whom the y come in contact with.
Sunshine Valley Child Care is a non-denomination Christian Child Care Center that offerschildren 16 months to 5 1/2 years a variety of activities and opportunties to learn and grow.
To provide education to solano county children
Christian Education provided to preschool through junior high school
Santa fe christian serves christian families by providing a gospel-centered, academically superior, and expanding educational experience.
The mission of the Samaritan Center-Simi Valley is to offer people experiencing housing and food insecurity supportive services essential to human dignity.
Crossroads Pregnancy Care is a Christ-centered and life-affirming ministry, providing hope, help, and healing to families affected by unplanned pregnancies or hurting from past abortions, and promoting sexual integrity. Social services…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mother Lode Christian School and the most unlike its peers is New Century Educators Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 22 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.
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: Sonora Area Foundation · Irving J Symons Foundation · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Symons Family Fund 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 Symons Family Fund?
Find your warmest path to Symons Family Fund 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.