· Private foundation
The Fenton 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $80k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $492k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AUDUBON SOCIETY CALIFORNIA | $135,000 |
| STANDFORD UNIVERSITY | $132,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO OPERA | $125,300 |
| THE ACCELERATION PROJECT | $100,000 |
| HUMANE SOCIETY | $25,000 |
| POST | $20,000 |
| CHRIST CHURCH PORTOLA VALLEY | $15,000 |
| EASTSIDE COLLEGE PREP | $10,000 |
| THE FIT KIDS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL VOLUNTEERS | $6,000 |
| SANTA FE OPERA | $5,000 |
| GRASSROOTS ECOLOGY | $5,000 |
| EPISCOPAL IMPACT FUND | $5,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB | $5,000 |
| GRACE SCIENCE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
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 (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 42% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +32% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 19 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 7 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $26k 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
- CCCONNECTICUT COLLEGE5× · 2020–2024 · $370k · revenue +22%
- TATHE ACCELERATION PROJECT INC4× · 2022–2025 · $210k · revenue +28%
- HWHumane World for Animals Inc4× · 2022–2025 · $100k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- ECEASTSIDE COLLEGE PREPARATORY SCHOOL INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +50%
- VWVENTANA WILDLIFE SOCIETYone grant, 2024 · $7k · revenue -2%
- SISTANFORD INSTITUTE FOR ECONOMIC POLICY RESEARCHone grant, 2021 · $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.
Nature collective's mission is to drive a passion for nature for all. we think inclusively and diversely when serving those devoid of nature those who remember nature and want to connect back to it and those who have an affinity with…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The resource renewal institute facilitates the creation, development and implementation of practical strategies to solve the entire complex environmental problem by addressing it comprehensively.
Perc is dedicated to advancing conservation through markets, incentives, property rights, and partnerships.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
The Chile-California Council is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to developing and promoting joint endeavors and cooperative relations between Chile and California, as well as individuals, legal entities and other institutions in…
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
Ocean conservancy unites science, people, and policy to protect our ocean, today and for generations to come.
To increase and diffuse geographic knowledge in the broadest sense, using the power of science, exploration, education and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of the world.
Panthera's mission is the conservation of the world's 40 wild cat species, many of which are endangered or threatened. panthera develops, implements and oversees wild cat conservation strategies on a global scale.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Partners in School Innovation and the most unlike its peers is Grace Science Foundation. 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 30 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% 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 14% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 51 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 SAN FRANCISCO OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE ACCELERATION PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA OPEN SPACE TRUST ↗
- Who funds POST ↗
- Who funds POSITIVE COACHING ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds THE FIT KIDS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA FE OPERA ↗
- Who funds GRACE SCIENCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY SILICON VALLEY ↗
- Who funds EASTSIDE COLLEGE PREPARATORY SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Environmental Volunteers Inc ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE PENINSULA ↗
- Who funds VENTANA WILDLIFE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds SUTTER BAY MEDICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Cornell University ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE JIM SAUNDERS FUND ↗
- Who funds Episcopal Impact Fund FKA Episcopal Charities ↗
- Who funds GRASSROOTS ECOLOGY ↗
- Who funds Acterra Action for a Healthy Planet ↗
- Who funds SUN VALLEY WRITERS' CONFERENCE INC ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN SCHOOL INNOVATION ↗
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: Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · The San Francisco Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · Patagoniaorg · Tides Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Fenton 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.
- Connecticut College — 0% 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 Fenton Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Fenton 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.