· Private foundation
The Bolton 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OAK VALLEY ELEMENTARY PTO | $1,000 |
| MOOSE CHARITIES | $700 |
| MOOSE CHARITIES | $700 |
| TULARE COUNTY SPECIAL OLYMPICS | $700 |
| TRI-CITY ECOLOGY CENTER UFF | $500 |
| EAT BAY REGIONAL PARKS | $500 |
| EAST BAY REGIONAL PARKS | $500 |
| NILES ROTARY FOUNDATION | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $400 |
| Individual grant recipient | $400 |
| SPECIAL OLYMPICS NORTHERN CALIFORNI | $400 |
| WASHINGTON HS HUSKIES BOOSTERS | $300 |
| GOLDEN GATE AREA COUNCIL SCOUTSBSA | $300 |
| CONSERVATION SOCIETY OF CA OAKZOO | $250 |
| WIKIMEDIA | $250 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 81% of your 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.
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 +62% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 6 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, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- MCMOOSE CHARITIES INC6× · 2020–2025 · $5k · revenue +74%
- HTHAPPY TRAILS RIDING ACADEMY5× · 2020–2024 · $2k · revenue +82%
- SOSPECIAL OLYMPICS NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INC6× · 2020–2025 · $2k · revenue +5%
Funded once
- KCKern County Library Foundationone grant, 2023 · $500 · revenue -10%
- CSCONSERVATION SOCIETY OF CALIFORNIAgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $450 · revenue +43%
ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANKone grant, 2021 · $400 · revenue +2%
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.
Northern California Sled Dog Rescue (NORSLED) is an all volunteer non-profit group dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating, fostering and finding new homes for unwanted, abused and abandoned siberian huskies, alaskan malamutes, samoyeds and…
To ensure every companion animal has access to quality medical care, compassionate shelter, and a loving home.
To ensure coast redwood forests in the santa cruz mountains thrive for generations to come. since 1900, sempervirens has protected more than 36,000 acres. learn more about our mission, vision, and strategic plan through 2030 at:…
The foundation works with diverse groups representing many interests to acquire and restore critical wildlife habitat and protecting species
The northcoast marine mammal centers (nmmc) mission is to promote the long-term health of marine mammals along approximately two hundred miles of remote coastline in humboldt and del norte counties in northern california. the nmmc does…
CSERC protects water, wildlife, and wild places of the Northern Yosemite region.
Protect the people of amador county and their property from the effects of catastrophic fires through education, cooperation, innovation and action
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Regional Parks Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Kern County Library Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
20 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. 20 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 MOOSE CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA FIRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTH COUNTY YOUTH COALITION ↗
- Who funds HAPPY TRAILS RIDING ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INC ↗
- Who funds Alameda County Library Foundation ↗
- Who funds SWEET NECTAR SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds ABODE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds The Ohlone Humane Society Inc ↗
- Who funds NILES ROTARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds REGIONAL PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MATH-SCIENCE NUCLEUS ↗
- Who funds NILES-CENTERVILLE LITTLE LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds Kern County Library Foundation ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION SOCIETY OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF OCEANO DUNES ↗
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: Fremont Bank Foundation · East Bay Community Foundation · The Intuit Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Bolton 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 Bolton Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Bolton 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.