· Private foundation
The Bernard Osher Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k47 grants · $292k
- $10k–50k61 grants · $1.3M
- $50k–250k24 grants · $2.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY - NRC | $119,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY | $115,000 |
| THE EXPLORATORIUM | $100,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART | $100,000 |
| FINE ARTS MUSEUM OF SAN FRANCISCO | $100,000 |
| ASIAN ART MUSEUM | $100,000 |
| KQED | $100,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO BALLET | $100,000 |
| CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES | $100,000 |
| REGENTS OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY | $100,000 |
| UCSF COMMUNITY CARE FUND | $100,000 |
| SUMMER SEARCH | $85,000 |
| AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER | $75,000 |
| ACADEMIC CONSORTIUM FOR INTEGRATIVE HEALTH MEDICINE AND HEALTH | $75,000 |
| BERKELEY REPERTORY THEATRE | $75,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $85k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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 +21% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
150 repeat relationships — 110 still active in FY2024, 40 since wound down; 16 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $568k 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
Northwestern University4× · 2021–2024 · $5.9M · revenue +14%
DRAKE UNIVERSITY3× · 2021–2023 · $1.2M · revenue +4%- CAClark Atlanta University Inc3× · 2021–2023 · $1.1M · revenue +18%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $5.3M
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTONone grant, 2021 · $2.1M
Vanderbilt Universityone grant, 2021 · $2.1M · revenue -1%
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.
We believe opera is a uniquely compelling, entertaining and emotionally thrilling art form. our mission is to bring together growing audiences to experience opera's transformative power.
The mission of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra (SJCO) is to share exciting, though-provoking, and vibrant Music by contemporary and time-honored composers reflecting the cultural diversity of our everchanging community, and to support and…
(cont from page 1) democratic society, and invaluable as a source of personal enrichment and growth.
The only music festival in North America dedicated to Mozart, our mission embraces both performance of highest artistic excellence and cultivation of new potential audience, including young people to assure the future appreciation of great…
California college of the arts educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. benefitting from its san francisco bay area location, the college prepares…
Take world-class symphonic music off the pedestal and into the heart of our community. San Francisco Philharmonic is an orchestral group dedicated to cultural enrichment, music education and creating a performance platform for women and…
See schedule 0founded in 1994, opera santa barbara is the signature provider of professional opera on the california central coast. we aspire to be a cultural leader in the santa barbara region, voicing and advancing our community's spirit…
Sfbatco unites artists and audiences through live theatre that is reflective of the authentic perspectives and history of the san francisco bay area.
Camerata Pacifica's mission is to affect positively how people experience live performances of classical music. The Organization will engage our audience intellectually and emotionally by presenting the finest performance of familiar and…
The san francisco bach choir brings people together to experience choral musics transformative power to touch, engage and inspire.
Opera Parallle presents compelling performances of contemporary operas with high musical and dramatic standards, embracing modern aesthetics, creative use of technology, and social relevance as essential to the future of the art form.…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Francisco Symphony and the most unlike its peers is Pickleberry Pie 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 43 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
145 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. 145 of the 255 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds University of Miami ↗
- Who funds DRAKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Clark Atlanta University Inc ↗
- Who funds University of Dayton ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ↗
- Who funds CORPORATION OF THE FINE ARTS MUSEUMS ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds THE CONTEMPORARY JEWISH MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds OAKLAND MUSEUM OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds SUMMER SEARCH ↗
- Who funds ASIAN ART MUSEUM FOUNDATION OF SAN FRANCISCO ↗
- Who funds THE EXPLORATORIUM ↗
- Who funds San Francisco Performances Inc ↗
- Who funds PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA & CHORALE ↗
- Who funds Stern Grove Festival Association ↗
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 William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · The Sam Mazza Foundation · Phyllis C Wattis Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · The Zellerbach Family Foundation · Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Fleishhacker Foundation · Kenneth Rainin Foundation · McNabb Foundation · Koret 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 Bernard Osher 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.
- Brandeis University — 9% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% 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.