· Private foundation
The Dominus Nihil 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
- $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| POLESTAR LIFETIME LEARNING FOUNDATION INC | $50,000 |
| CANYON CREST ACADEMY FOUNDATION INC | $20,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 27% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +10% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 2 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $70k 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
- PWPublic Watchdogs5× · 2018–2022 · $1.1M · revenue -95% · 65% of their budget
- SPSOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC3× · 2017–2019 · $810k · revenue +10%
- HRHUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC2× · 2017–2022 · $236k · revenue +53%
Funded once
- TOTHE OPTIMUS FOUNDATION FUND - NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUSTone grant, 2018 · $500k
- TGTHE GRAUER FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $250k
- CWCALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAWone grant, 2021 · $200k · revenue -12%
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.
San Diego Jewish Academy empowers each student to learn for life, guided by Jewish values and rooted in strength of community.
California college of the arts educates students to shape culture and society through the practice and critical study of art, architecture, design, and writing. benefitting from its san francisco bay area location, the college prepares…
to advance regional contemporary art and artists while fostering cultural equity through access to meaningful art experiences
Guided by the principles of academic rigor and diversity, the international school of san francisco offers programs of study in french and english to prepare its graduates for a world in which the ability to think critically and to…
Provide a high standard of education to students through comprehensive curriculum supported by energetic, dynamic, and caring teachers.
Inspire brave learners to shape the future.
The las mission is to create a learning community where students: utilize bilingualism and biliteracy (spanish and english) to achieve academic excellence and apply skills in real-world situations and diverse settings; develop and exhibit…
The mission of scvi is to provide a rigorous, relevant, inquiry-based, self-directed and collaborative learning environment for students in grades tk-12, inspiring them to become lifelong learners with the skills to lead in the 21st…
Calarts is a multidisciplinary community of artists. our ongoing educational endeavor is grounded in openness, experimentation, critical engagement, and creative freedom. through artistic practice, we transform ourselves, each other, and…
The mission of the silicon schools fund is to improve education through supporting the launch of excellent new schools, improving academic instruction in existing schools, and by funding some of the boldest innovations in education…
Private school for students with mild to moderate learning differences working with families to provide a safe educational environment.
Slo rep strengthens theatre's cultural influence and enriches the central coast by producing professional theatre, nurturing artists and providing theatre education for children and adults.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is California Western School of Law and the most unlike its peers is Public Watchdogs. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 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. 9 of the 12 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 Public Watchdogs ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW ↗
- Who funds GRAUER FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds LUX ART INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Canyon Crest Academy Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds VISTA HILL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTH COAST REPERTORY THEATRE ↗
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 · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego · Sempra Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 Dominus Nihil 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 Dominus Nihil Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Dominus Nihil 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.