· Private foundation
The Betterworld Trust
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 $10k1 grant · $3k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $76k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BOOKS FOR AFRICA | $50,000 |
| FOCUSING PHILANTHROPY | $25,000 |
| FALLBROOK FOOD PANTRY | $15,550 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF NORTH COUNTY | $15,000 |
| FALLBROOK SENIOR CENTER | $10,000 |
| FALLBROOK ART CENTER | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $29k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 83% 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 15% of The Betterworld Trust’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, 39% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 36% — 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 +78% since the first grant, against +36% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 18 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- LMLAST MILE HEALTH6× · 2017–2023 · $750k · revenue +85%
- FPFOCUSING PHILANTHROPY INC3× · 2019–2024 · $100k · revenue +15%
- FFFALLBROOK FOOD PANTRY7× · 2018–2024 · $63k · revenue ×11
Funded once
- SDSAN DIEGO CHILDREN'S DISCOVERY MUSEUMgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +36%
- BFBOOKS FOR AFRICAone grant, 2018 · $10k
- SSEVAone 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.
On a mission to connect every person facing hunger with nutritious meals by maximizing food rescue. through direct service and community partnerships, feeding san diego provides more than 26 million meals each year to children, families,…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
To end hunger and transform the health of our community by providing nourishment to those in need by acquiring and distributing safe nutritious food via local agencies and by providing education to solve hunger and nutritional problems in…
Balboa Park Conservancy (the Conservancy) was organized on November 3, 1923. The Conservancy is the City of San Diegos (the City) partner and advocated for the greater good of Balboa Park (the Park). The Conservancy collaborated with and…
The mission of this corporation is to operate, maintain, and improve recreational and sports facilities and fields owned by California public agencies and non-profit organizations and to support and develop amateur atheletic organizations…
produce, distribute, prepare, serve, and eat nutritional and culturally appropriate food.
The jacobs & cushman san diego food bank is the largest hunger-relief organization in san diego county. its mission is to provide nutritious food to people in need, advocate for the hungry, and educate the public about hunger-related…
Food forward fights hunger and prevents food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce, connecting this abundance with people experiencing food insecurity, and inspiring others to do the same.
San Diego Jewish Academy empowers each student to learn for life, guided by Jewish values and rooted in strength of community.
San diego french-american school offers an exceptional bilingual education within a vibrant international community, preparing students to become confident, responsible and engaged global citizens.
To sustain, envision, and enhance Balboa Park for all in partnership with the City of San Diego and in collaboration with other organizations in the Park and the community. Our vision for the Park is to maintain and enhance its stature as…
Jewish federation of san diego county is dedicated to building a vibrant, caring, connected, and enduring jewish community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fallbrook Food Pantry and the most unlike its peers is DVine Path 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 30 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) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 47 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 LAST MILE HEALTH ↗
- Who funds BOOKS FOR AFRICA INC ↗
- Who funds FOCUSING PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds FALLBROOK FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds Boys & Girls Club of North County ↗
- Who funds Edify ↗
- Who funds UC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Fallbrook Senior Citizens Service Club ↗
- Who funds FLORESTA USA INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds VOICES FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds Words Alive ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO CHILDREN'S DISCOVERY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds EDUCATIONAL ENRICHMENT SYSTEMS INC ↗
- Who funds BAJA EDUCATIONAL INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds COASTAL ROOTS FARM ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CORAZON DE VIDA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Counties ↗
- Who funds FALLBROOK MUSIC SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Fallbrook Child Development Center Inc ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL CONSERVATION FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds FALLBROOK VILLAGE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Burn Institute ↗
- Who funds Fallbrook Art 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 San Diego Foundation · The Nordson Corporation Foundation · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · Sempra Foundation · French Fund Samuel Katherine Tua · David C Copley Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · Angel Society of Fallbrook · Legacy Endowment the Community Foundation · Ellen G and Edward G Wong 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 Betterworld Trust 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 Betterworld Trust?
Find your warmest path to The Betterworld Trust 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.