· Private foundation
The Donna L Kendall 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 $10k5 grants · $2k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $50k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $161k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY OF ORANGE COUNTY | $161,000 |
| CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSN | $25,000 |
| ROYAL COLLEGE OF MUSIC | $25,000 |
| METROPOLITAN OPERA GUILD | $1,400 |
| NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY | $350 |
| METROPOLITAN OPERA CLUB | $250 |
| NSCDA DUMBARTON HOUSE | $100 |
| AM SOCIETY FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS | $100 |
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 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of The Donna L Kendall Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 79% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 71% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
15 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 3 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- PSPHILHARMONIC SOCIETY OF ORANGE COUNTY9× · 2017–2025 · $1.5M · revenue +16%
- CSChicago Symphony Orchestra9× · 2017–2025 · $223k · revenue +58%
- TSTHE SANTA FE OPERA3× · 2017–2019 · $125k · revenue +53%
Funded once
- RPROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA OF SCOTLANDone grant, 2023 · $10k
- IBIRVINE BARCLAY THEATERone grant, 2021 · $5k
- AFALLIANCE FRANCAISE - CHICAGOone grant, 2018 · $5k
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 present the highest-quality performances of great music, bringing national and international distinction to the orchestra and its community; to delight and educate audiences of all ages and backgrounds, and enhance the cultural vitality…
We believe opera is a uniquely compelling, entertaining and emotionally thrilling art form. our mission is to bring together growing audiences to experience opera's transformative power.
To be north carolina's state orchestra, an orchestra achieving the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards, and embracing its dual legacies of statewide service and music education.
The Culver City Symphony Orchestra strives to enlighten and inspire the diverse citizenry of Culver City and the Los Angeles area through the presentation of orchestral music concerts, to present works of American composers, and to…
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
New york city opera was famously dubbed "the people's opera" by mayor fiorello laguardia at its founding in 1943. more than 80 years later, city opera continues its historic mission to inspire audiences with innovative and theatrically…
See schedule 0founded in 1994, opera santa barbara is the signature provider of professional opera on the california central coast. we aspire to be a cultural leader in the santa barbara region, voicing and advancing our community's spirit…
The minnesota orchestra mission is to enrich, inspire and serve our community as an enduring symphony orchestra internationally recognized for its artistic excellence.
To serve the public by producing world-class opera that preserves, promotes and advances the art form while embodying the diversity, spirit and artistic sensibility unique to los angeles. we envision an engaged and enlightened community in…
Mission: the mission of san diego opera is to deliver exceptional performances and exciting, accessible programs to diverse audiences, focusing on community partnerships, and the transformative and expressive power of the human voice. as…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Santa Fe Opera and the most unlike its peers is Masters School. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
13 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. 13 of the 30 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 PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY OF ORANGE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Chicago Symphony Orchestra ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds ORANGE COUNTY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Segerstrom Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds THE SOLTI FOUNDATION US CO Fiona Queen ↗
- Who funds The Metropolitan Opera Guild Inc ↗
- Who funds MASTERS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS COUNCIL OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds MYSTIC SEAPORT MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLES W BOWERS MUSEUM CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN OPERA CLUB ↗
- Who funds WYOMING OUTDOOR COUNCIL ↗
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: Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Donna L Kendall 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.
- Mystic Seaport Museum Inc — 5% 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 Donna L Kendall Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Donna L Kendall 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.