· Private foundation
The Blue Oak Charitable Fund
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
95% of The Blue Oak Charitable Fund’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 2 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2018, the last year The Blue Oak Charitable Fund named its own grantees at scale: 12 organizations, $808k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2018
- Under $10k9 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $87k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $441k
- $250k+1 grant · $251k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRIENDS OF UNIVERSIDAD F M INC | $251,000 |
| ATLAS NETWORK | $212,600 |
| GUANACASTE DRY FOREST CONSERVATION | $125,000 |
| STUDENTS FOR LIBERTY | $53,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION | $50,000 |
| BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| REASON FOUNDATION | $21,900 |
| HOPE CRISIS REPONSE NETWORK | $20,000 |
| SOUTHERN LAKE COUNTY FIREFIGHERS AS | $10,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR GOVT ACCOUNTABILITY | $10,000 |
| FISHER CENTER FOR ALZHEIMERS RESEARCH | $7,500 |
| CATO INSTITUTE | $7,100 |
| REUNION MINISTRIES | $6,500 |
| HUMANE SOCIETY OF SONOMA COUNTY | $3,000 |
| THE VEGETARIAN RESOURCE GROUP | $2,000 |
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, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 47% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
22 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2018, 3 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2018 (too recent to call). Read against FY2018, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 23% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k 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
- SFSTUDENTS FOR LIBERTY INC2× · 2017–2018 · $203k · revenue +49%
- TRTHE REASON FOUNDATION4× · 2017–2020 · $201k · revenue +80%
- FFFoundation for Economic Education Inc2× · 2017–2018 · $200k · revenue +66%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $261k
- NSNEVADA SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALSgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $100k · revenue +84%
- HRHUMAN RIGHTS FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $75k · revenue +648%
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 provide accurate, objective information and analysis on international strategic issues for legislators, diplomats, foreign affairs analysts, international business leaders, economists, the military, defense commentators, journalists,…
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 mission of the institute for in vitro sciences (iivs) is to drive the optimization and application of scientifically robust in vitro methods that are accepted by regulatory agencies and adopted by industry worldwide. to create a forum…
At the internet society foundation, we focus on funding initiatives that strengthen the internet in function and reach so that it can effectively serve all people. our work advances the vision of the internet society (isoc): the internet…
Using legal advocacy to make advances in science and technology safer for people and the planet.
Marin humane transforms lives through exceptional animal care, humane education, and advocacy. every day, marin humane inspires compassion and positive relationships between people and animals.
Isd-us is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to defending democracy and individual rights against threats to public safety and national security. isd-us is at the forefront of analyzing and innovating solutions…
The institute for defense analyses is organized for the purpose of applied research. the institute for defense analyses provides independent and objective scientific and technological expertise to assist national security decision-makers…
Our mission is to invest in and accelerate the development of the most promising future leaders in biomedical research with global impact.
Finreglab is a d.c.-based research organization working at the intersection of financial innovation and public policy. our mission is to advance technology and data use to help people and small businesses manage their financial lives,…
Institute for the future is the world's leading futures organization. our mission is to prepare the world to create better, more equitable futures by disrupting short-term thinking with visions of transformative possibilities.
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Canine Companions for Independence Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Bastiat Society. 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 33 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 10% 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, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 27 of the 49 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 VANGUARD CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds STUDENTS FOR LIBERTY INC ↗
- Who funds THE REASON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Foundation for Economic Education Inc ↗
- Who funds NEVADA SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE BREAST CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CATO INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE MONT PELERIN SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds THE MULTIPLE MYELOMA RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TRAINED UP ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF SONOMA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THE VEGETARIAN RESOURCE GROUP ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL RELIEF TEAMS ↗
- Who funds Minnie Cannon Boosters ↗
- Who funds THE BASTIAT SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CANINE COMPANIONS FOR INDEPENDENCE INC ↗
- Who funds DOGS FOR THE DEAF INC DBA DOGS FOR BETTER LIVES ↗
- Who funds NEADS INC ↗
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: Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Network for Good · 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 Blue Oak Charitable Fund 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.
- Neads Inc — 1% 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 Blue Oak Charitable Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Blue Oak Charitable Fund 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.