· Private foundation
The Banks Family Foundation
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
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $145k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA | $20,000 |
| CREATIVE GROWTH ART CENTER | $15,000 |
| NIROGA INSTITUTE | $15,000 |
| PRESCOTT CIRCUS THEATRE | $15,000 |
| YOUTH ALIVE | $15,000 |
| OAKLAND SOCCER CLUB | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| DESTINY ARTS CENTER | $15,000 |
| MOCHA - MUSEUM OF CHILDREN'S ART | $10,000 |
| MAPS ARTS | $10,000 |
| PARK DAY SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| ST ANN'S SCHOOL | $5,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $98k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 10% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of The Banks 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, 94% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 92% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +69% since the first grant, against -40% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 20 since wound down; 1 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $15k 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
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF OAKLAND4× · 2019–2023 · $100k · revenue +78%
- CGCreative Growth Art Center8× · 2017–2024 · $90k · revenue +69%
- DADestiny Arts Center6× · 2018–2024 · $78k · revenue +109%
Funded once
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF OAKLANDone grant, 2020 · $250k · revenue -66%
- LBLOTUS BLOOMone grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue -50%
- ACALAMEDA CTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANKone grant, 2020 · $15k
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 advance arts justice by ensuring that all students in under-resourced oakland public schools receive a comprehensive arts education in order to improve learning and promote achievement.
For more than 70 years, East Bay Agency for Children continues to improve the well-being of children, youth and families by reducing the impact of trauma and social inequalities.
To establish and maintain a positive school culture in which all students are motivated to learn, support each other, and have structures in place that assist students in accessing their full artistic and academic potential.
To prepare its students for admission to and success in college and career,and to become happy and productive members of society.
The school is committed to providing a high quality education for children from all socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. the faculty and staff create an atmosphere where every child can grow academically, emotionally, physically and…
The Museum of Children's Art (MOCHA) in Oakland aims to ensure the arts are a fundamental part of the community by providing quality, hands-on art experiences, particularly for children at risk academically or in underserved areas. Their…
Oakland Genesis provides afterschool soccer programming to 4 Oakland Unified School District Middle Schools. Oakland Genesis also provides cost free competitive soccer programming to middle school aged participants that include…
BRIDGEGOOD increases opportunity and digital literacy for under-resourced students with a focus on Black Indigenous and Women People of Color. We prepare first-generation college students for careers in UX UI and Visual Design while…
Education of preschool aged children, toddlers, and parents. the play-based programs are designed to develop all aspects of the child's growth: social, emotional, physical, creative, and intellectual and to prepare them for kindergarten.
The mission of Oakland Bloom is to advance food and economic justice community power and resilience with working-class immigrant and diaspora chef-entrepreneurs. Oakland Bloom does this through stewarding Open Test Kitchen as a kitchen and…
Our vision: a thriving oakland community without barriers to educational opportunity.our mission: engaging the oakland community to advance equity and economic mobility through cradle to college and career achievement.
Through a combined effort of staff, students, parents, and community baytech students will learn the necessary skills required for college and career readiness by engaging in a rigorous curriculum emphasizing stem. our students will…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is East Oakland Youth Development Center and the most unlike its peers is Country Roads 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 30 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 51 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 CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF OAKLAND ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF OAKLAND ↗
- Who funds Creative Growth Art Center ↗
- Who funds Destiny Arts Center ↗
- Who funds Oakland Lacrosse Club ↗
- Who funds ST VINCENTS DAY HOME ↗
- Who funds NIROGA INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Prescott Circus Theatre ↗
- Who funds YOUTH ALIVE ↗
- Who funds Oakland Leaf Foundation ↗
- Who funds East Oakland Youth Development Center ↗
- Who funds PARK DAY SCHOOL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Oakland Youth Chorus ↗
- Who funds Oakland Soccer Club ↗
- Who funds ST MARY'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds BROTHERS ON THE RISE ↗
- Who funds CYCLES OF CHANGE ↗
- Who funds SUPER STARS LITERACY INC ↗
- Who funds Community Education Partnerships ↗
- Who funds LOTUS BLOOM ↗
- Who funds Oakland Kids First ↗
- Who funds EAST BAY ASIAN YOUTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HELP IN PARK SLOPE INC ↗
- Who funds THE OAKLAND PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds ALTERNATIVES IN ACTION ↗
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: East Bay Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · The Barrios Trust · Lowell Berry Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Oakland Public Education Fund · Bernard E & Alba Witkin Charitable Foundation · The Morris Stulsaft Foundation · The California Wellness Foundation · T Gary and Kathleen Rogers Private Family Foundation · West Davis & Bergard Foundation · Wayne and Gladys Valley 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 Banks 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 The Banks Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Banks 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.