· Private foundation
The Bravo 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 · $3k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $295k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ORANGE COUNTY RESCUE MISSION | $50,000 |
| PROJECT MERCY | $50,000 |
| RED CROSS OF SAN DIEGO | $30,000 |
| BIG BROTHERSBIG SISTERS SAN DIEGO | $30,000 |
| EMILIO NARES FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| OCEAN DISCOVERY INSTITUTE | $30,000 |
| WOMEN IN ANIMATION | $25,000 |
| OUTDOOR OUTREACH | $25,000 |
| HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES | $25,000 |
| PROYECTO PASTORAL AT DELORES MISSION | $25,000 |
| SAN MARCOS UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT | $15,000 |
| EPISCOPAL COMMUNITY SERVICES | $15,000 |
| FAMILIES FORWARD | $15,000 |
| OPERATION HOMEFRONT | $10,000 |
| UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $310k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 73% 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 +46% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
62 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 46 since wound down; 1 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- CDCOMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS INC8× · 2017–2025 · $210k · revenue +91%
- OOOUTDOOR OUTREACH7× · 2017–2025 · $151k · revenue +159%
- OCOrange County Rescue Mission Inc6× · 2019–2025 · $130k · revenue +29%
Funded once
- CHCHILDREN'S HOSPITALone grant, 2024 · $50k
- UEUCSD EYE MOBILE FOR CHILDRENone grant, 2018 · $20k
- IRInternational Rescue Committee INCgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $20k · revenue +80%
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.
La Casa de las Madres' mission is to respond to calls for help from DV victims, of all ages, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We give survivors the tools to transform their lives. We seek to prevent future violence by educating the…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. STEM Advantage mentors, prepares, and inspires first-generation, low-income, and underserved college students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). We level…
Instituto provides hiv related services and social service including health promotion, education, prevention, early intervention, case management and clinical and artistic mentoring services, psychological and psychiatric interventions as…
The mission of san diego volunteer lawyer program, inc. is to provide equal access to the justice system by serving as a bridge between indigent and other disadvantaged people in san diego county and the volunteer lawyers who are willing…
San Diego Jewish Academy empowers each student to learn for life, guided by Jewish values and rooted in strength of community.
Institute of Public Strategies (IPS) is a nonprofit corporation that receives its funding from local and federal governmental agencies and private foundations, through long-term grants or contracts to provide community-level services…
Centro Legal De La Raza is a comprehensive legal services agency protecting and advancing the rights of low-income immigrant communities throguh culturally competent bilingual legal representation, education, and advocacy.
Dreams for Change's mission is to respond to the needs of San Diegans by creating innovative and cost-effective programs to empower and stabilize the lives of under-served families and individuals.
To partner with youth, families, adults and communities to reach their full potential and is achieved through comprehensive and integrated programming in the areas of child and youth development; youth, adult and family wellness and…
San Francisco CASA transforms the lives of children and youth traumatized and displaced in the foster care and related systems by providing one consistent, caring volunteer advocate, trained to address each childs needs in the court and…
Green Dot Public Schools' mission is to help transform public education so that every child can be successful in college, leadership and life. Green Dot Public Schools manages the development of and supports the operation of high quality…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Families Forward and the most unlike its peers is Saving Jane 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 30 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 15% 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.
79 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. 79 of the 122 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 COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS INC ↗
- Who funds OUTDOOR OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds Orange County Rescue Mission Inc ↗
- Who funds WOMEN IN ANIMATION INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds GIRLS LEADING GIRLS ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF CARSON INC ↗
- Who funds FRESH START SURGICAL GIFTS ↗
- Who funds GIRLS RISING ↗
- Who funds The Freedom Writers Foundation ↗
- Who funds JUMA VENTURES INC ↗
- Who funds Emilio Nares Foundation ↗
- Who funds SUMMER SEARCH ↗
- Who funds FEEDING SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES ↗
- Who funds Homeless Prenatal Program Inc ↗
- Who funds BARRIO LOGAN COLLEGE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds OCEAN DISCOVERY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Girls Leadership Institute Inc dba Girls Leadership ↗
- Who funds San Diego Council on Literacy ↗
- Who funds MAMA'S KITCHEN ↗
- Who funds Words Alive ↗
- Who funds Casa Cornelia Legal Services ↗
- Who funds St Anne School ↗
- Who funds Pure Game ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Proyecto Pastoral ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF VISTA 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: The San Diego Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · The Conrad Prebys Foundation · David C Copley Foundation · The Parker Foundation · The Nordson Corporation Foundation · Sempra Foundation · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · The Cushman Foundation · Samuel I & John Henry Fox Foundation · Pratt Memorial 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 Bravo 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 Bravo Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Bravo 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.