· Private foundation
The Bernice Heffernan 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $56k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OUR LADY OF THE LAKE PARISH | $55,545 |
| SACRED HEART SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| SACRED HEART RETREAT APOSTOLATE | $10,000 |
| VERBUM DEI HIGH SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND | $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 (FY17–24, $68k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 5% of The Bernice Heffernan 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.
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 +56% since the first grant, against +41% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 36 since wound down; 2 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, 43% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $61k 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
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES OF ORANGE COUNTY INC8× · 2017–2024 · $63k · revenue +118%
OUTSIDE IN7× · 2017–2024 · $47k · revenue +95%- FOFRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN5× · 2018–2024 · $36k · revenue +213%
Funded once
- VDVERBUM DEI JESUIT HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2024 · $85k
- OCORANGE CATHOLIC FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $10k
- OLOUR LADY OF THE LAKE SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $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.
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…
Catholic charities affirms the dignity of every person, partnering with parishes and the greater community to serve and advocate for those who are vulnerable, bringing stability and hope to people throughout eastern washington.
To enhance the lives of people with developmental and other disabilities by creating quality, affordable housing options.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Believing in the value of every life, mary's path empowers vulnerable teen mothers in foster care and their babies to create lives of dignity, hope and self-sufficiency.
Compass family services helps homeless families and those at imminent risk to achieve housing stability, economic self-sufficiency, and well-being.
Community Housing Sonoma County creates supportive housing communities for people living with disabling conditions, especially veterans.
Scu is a catholic and jesuit institution that makes student learning its central focus, promotes faculty and staff learning in its various forms, and exhibits organizational learning.
Advance health and social justice for all members of our community.
Engaging the community to end hunger
To provide housing for low income persons, and to support tenderloin neighborhood development corporation in carrying out its purpose.
A diverse and sustainable learning community dedicated to discovery and excellence in teaching, scholarship and practice, pacific university inspires students to think, care, create and pursue justice in our world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Valley Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Butte County Firefighters Benevolent Fund Inc. 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 34 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 — 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.
40 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. 40 of the 67 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 ORANGE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds OUTSIDE IN ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds MERCY FOUNDATION NORTH ↗
- Who funds CORPORATION OF GONZAGA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL BLEEDING DISORDERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds POOR AND THE HOMELESS TEHAMA COUNTY COALITION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE CHILDREN-PORTLAND ↗
- Who funds University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds LifeNet Family Resource ↗
- Who funds THE NORTHWEST CATHOLIC COUNSELING CENTER ↗
- Who funds BLANCHET HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY ↗
- Who funds OREGON FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds TALLER SAN JOSE HOPE BUILDERS ↗
- Who funds HOMES FOR OUR TROOPS INC ↗
- Who funds St Anne School ↗
- Who funds THE BASIC FUND ↗
- Who funds BUTTE COUNTY FIREFIGHTERS BENEVOLENT FUND INC ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK OF ORANGE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds Trustees of Tufts College ↗
- Who funds Family Service Agency of Tehama County ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY CYCLING 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: OCF Joseph E Weston Public Foundation · Juan Young Trust · Orange County Community Foundation · The Oregon Community Foundation · The Collins Foundation · Catholic Community Foundation of Los Angeles · Dignity Health · California Community Foundation · Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust · The Gordon D Sondland and Katherine J Durant Foundation · The Levecke Family Foundation · Nobbs Family 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 Bernice Heffernan 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Outside in — 33% of income from government
- Transition Projects Inc — 29% of income from government
- Oregon Food Bank — 21% of income from government
- New Avenues for Youth Inc — 20% of income from government
- Trustees of Tufts College — 13% of income from government
- Hollywood Senior Center dba Community for Positive Aging — 9% of income from government
- Friends of the Children-Portland — 5% of income from government
- Solve — 5% of income from government
- Smart Reading — 3% of income from government
- Community Cycling Center — 2% of income from government
- Serendipity Center Inc — 2% of income from government
- University of Portland — 1% of income from government
- The Northwest Catholic Counseling Center — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Bernice Heffernan Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Bernice Heffernan 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.