· Private foundation
The Bales 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.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SANTA FE FOOD DEPOT | $2,500 |
| SOLSTICE PROJECT | $1,000 |
| REGARDING HER | $1,000 |
| FLORENCE IMMIGRANT REFUGEE RIGHTS P | $500 |
| FOUNDATIN FOR HISTORIC CHRIST CHURC | $250 |
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 (FY17–20, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 19% of The Bales Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 32% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 20% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
11 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 3 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, 67% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- FIFRAMEWORKS INSTITUTE2× · 2017–2018 · $16k · revenue +39%
- MTMOSAIC THEATER COMPANY OF DC2× · 2017–2018 · $10k · revenue +11%
- SPSOLSTICE PROJECT INC5× · 2020–2025 · $6k · revenue +351%
Funded once
- JHJEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF GR WAone grant, 2017 · $20k
- PCPitzer Collegegraduatedone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +49%
- SMSIMMS MANN INSTITUTEone grant, 2019 · $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.
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.
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
To advance the practice of higher education attorneys for the benefit of the institutions they serve.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
We empower directors and transform boards to be future ready.
MCF is a vibrant philanthropic community connecting, strengthening and mobilizing the power of philanthropy to advance prosperity and equity.
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
To drive transformational adaptation to protect communities across the country from higher seas, stronger storms, and more frequent flooding.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
National public radio, inc. ("npr") works collaboratively with member public radio station licensees ("member stations") to create a more informed public, one that is challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of…
The AIA California, in collaboration with local components, is the voice of the architectural profession.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Naacp Legal Defense & Educ Fund Inc and the most unlike its peers is Rosenwald Park Campaign. 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 52 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 37 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 Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum ↗
- Who funds FRAMEWORKS INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce ↗
- Who funds Pitzer College ↗
- Who funds MOSAIC THEATER COMPANY OF DC ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOLSTICE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds DEFY VENTURES INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDRENS CENTER AT CALTECH ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI CENTER FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds ROSENWALD PARK CAMPAIGN ↗
- Who funds UNITED WE DREAM NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds Nonprofit Information Networking Association ↗
- Who funds University of the Pacific ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE BAY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUC FUND INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds HENRYS FORK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Foundation for Historic Christ Church Inc ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR JUSTICE ↗
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: National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 The Bales 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Chesapeake Bay Foundation Inc — 2% 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.