· Private foundation
Szekely Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
59% of Szekely Family Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to The San Diego Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 10 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year Szekely Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 12 organizations, $206k. 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 19 grants below total $156,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $205,500 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $49,000 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 · FY2022
- Under $10k13 grants · $52k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $55k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| San Diego Foundation | $50,000 |
| E-LAW | $15,000 |
| Inewsource | $10,000 |
| Bioneers | $10,000 |
| World Central Kitchen | $10,000 |
| Pachamama Alliance | $10,000 |
| Areday (Project Earthbound) | $5,000 |
| Amigos Hospitalito Atitlan | $5,000 |
| Americas Foundation | $5,000 |
| Commonweal | $5,000 |
| Old Globe Theatre | $5,000 |
| Butterfly Project | $5,000 |
| Arawaka | $5,000 |
| Los Cimientos Alliance | $5,000 |
| The Seeds Project - World Wheel | $4,000 |
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 (FY24–24, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 0% 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 +36% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
16 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2022, 5 since wound down; 27 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, 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 FY2024, 42% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $41k 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
- ELENVIRONMENTAL LAW ALLIANCE WORLDWIDE3× · 2021–2023 · $40k · revenue +32%
- CHCOLLECTIVE HERITAGE INSTITUTE4× · 2021–2024 · $30k · revenue +109%
COMMONWEAL4× · 2021–2024 · $17k · revenue +142%
Funded once
- MMAIAgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue +109%
MADRE INCone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue -4%- CCCommunity Church of Monterey Peninsulaone grant, 2021 · $5k
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.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
The Museo De Las Americas is dedicated to educating our community through collecting preserving interpreting and exhibiting the diverse arts and cultures of the Americas from ancient to contemporary through innovative exhibitions and…
Nature and culture international conserves biologically diverse landscapes in latin america, in concert with local cultures, for the well-being of the planet.
Within the Americas promoting dialogue and research, producing studies and reports, conducting courses and conferences particularly in the areas of agroecology and food security
To inspire, educate and cultivate curiosity through great works of art.
Acquire, manage and protect land in perpetuity that supports sensitive habitats and species, and to educate and inspire people and communities as stewards and advocates of their natural environment.
Nature collective's mission is to drive a passion for nature for all. we think inclusively and diversely when serving those devoid of nature those who remember nature and want to connect back to it and those who have an affinity with…
Advance the well- being of mountain people and conservation of mountain environments.
MESA connects and cultivates sustainable farmers and food systems leaders around the world.
To protect the rainforest and advance the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with Indigenous communities in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon Basin's…
The Institute for New Global Politics is a California-based educational nonprofit corporation organized and operated exclusively for charitable purposes. It is an independent and nonpartisan thinktank dedicated to educating the general…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The San Diego Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Americas Foundation Inc. 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 28 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 57 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 SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL LAW ALLIANCE WORLDWIDE ↗
- Who funds COLLECTIVE HERITAGE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds The Pachamama Alliance ↗
- Who funds COMMONWEAL ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds INVESTIGATIVE NEWSOURCE ↗
- Who funds MAIA ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds NEW AMERICANS MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds OLD GLOBE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SAMUEL LAWRENCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds The San Diego River Park Foundation ↗
- Who funds MADRE INC ↗
- Who funds The Butterfly Project ↗
- Who funds Amigos Hospitalito Atitlan ↗
- Who funds UNIHI EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Wild Farm Alliance ↗
- Who funds HUMMINGBIRD TRANSFORMATIONAL LIVING CENTER ↗
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: Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · The San Diego Foundation · The Conrad Prebys Foundation · The Parker Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · Girard Foundation · Samuel I & John Henry Fox Foundation · Leichtag Foundation · California Humanities · Alumbra Innovations Foundation · David C Copley 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 Szekely 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 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 Szekely Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Szekely 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.