· Private foundation
The Cleaves and Mae Rhea Foundation
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 $10k21 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| City Academy | $10,000 |
| Woodland Park Zoo | $10,000 |
| Alameda County Community Food Bank | $6,000 |
| MALT | $5,000 |
| Berkeley Food Network | $5,000 |
| Berkeley Public Library | $3,000 |
| St Louis Children's Hospital Foundation | $2,500 |
| Mary's Place | $2,000 |
| Doctors without borders | $2,000 |
| Ballard Food Bank | $2,000 |
| Children's Hospital Colorado Foundation | $2,000 |
| Food Lifeline | $2,000 |
| Home Works | $2,000 |
| The Nature Conservancy | $2,000 |
| Springboard Foundation | $1,500 |
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 (FY17–21, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 66% 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 +33% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2024, 18 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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
- CACITY ACADEMY INC8× · 2017–2024 · $78k · revenue +97%
ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK5× · 2020–2024 · $46k · revenue +39%- WPWOODLAND PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY4× · 2021–2024 · $26k · revenue +30%
Funded once
- MAMARIN AGRICULTURAL LAND TRUSTgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $12k · revenue +33%
- GCGILL CHILDREN'S SERVICES INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $9k · revenue +103%
- FWFORT WORTH MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND HISTORYone grant, 2017 · $7k · revenue +1%
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.
By advocating for quality early care and education, empowering families with information and financial support, and building the capabilities of educators, Children's Council of San Francisco ensures that every child in San Francisco has…
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.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
Foodwise grows thriving communities through the power and joy of local food. We envision a world that nourishes all people, local economies, and the living earth.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
The mission of the San Francisco Public Press is to enrich civic life by publishing investigative and solutions journalism that engages diverse audiences and promotes public accountability. The San Francisco Public Press…
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
Ccfb is dedicated to ending hunger, working with over 200 partner agencies to provide food to those experiencing hunger. our mission: transforming lives together, in the passionate pursuit to end hunger in central ca - one meal, one…
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.
Food Rescue - The Organization rescues excess fresh food from Bay Area businesses, schools and non-profits and immediately delivers the food to safety net partners - such as senior housing centers, after-school programs, and homeless…
SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM connects and inspires audiences, students and teachers, and filmmakers through our film…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is California Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Family Resource Navigators. 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 35 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
49 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. 49 of the 68 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 CITY ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds WOODLAND PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS AREA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds HOME WORKS - THVP ↗
- Who funds Berkeley Food Network ↗
- Who funds North Coast Land Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds MARIN AGRICULTURAL LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds VIDA VERDE NATURE EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Colorado Foundation ↗
- Who funds WOMENS DAYTIME DROP-IN CENTER ↗
- Who funds SPRINGBOARD TO LEARNING INC ↗
- Who funds Homeless Prenatal Program Inc ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC URBAN PROGRAMS NFP ↗
- Who funds The Springboard Foundation ↗
- Who funds GILL CHILDREN'S SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds GUIDE DOGS FOR THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds FORT WORTH MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY ↗
- Who funds SHERWOOD FOREST CAMP INC ↗
- Who funds Maris Place ↗
- Who funds FOOD LIFELINE ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds BALLARD FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ASPIRE EDUCATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA FIRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKE COUNTY CRISIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds LENA POPE HOME INC ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SF New Deal ↗
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: Bernard E & Alba Witkin Charitable Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Mary a Crocker Trust · Marin Community Foundation · East Bay Community Foundation · Bothin Foundation · United Way of Greater St Louis Inc · McNabb Foundation · The James Irvine Foundation · St Louis Community Foundation Inc · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Bnsf Railway 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 Cleaves and Mae Rhea 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.
- North Coast Land Conservancy Inc — 6% 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 Cleaves and Mae Rhea Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Cleaves and Mae Rhea 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.