· Private foundation
The Foster 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $105k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.5M
- $250k+1 grant · $300k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNION RESCUE MISSION | $300,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $201,660 |
| CELIAC DISEASE FOUNDATION | $200,000 |
| MEET EACH NEED WITH DIGNITY (MEND) | $200,000 |
| CASA YOUTH SHELTER | $125,000 |
| BUMBLEBEE FOUNDATION | $125,000 |
| CASA PACIFICA | $100,000 |
| EMPOWERED NETWORK | $100,000 |
| HEAVENLY HOME | $100,000 |
| LINCOLN PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| THE MARK & JACOB ISKANDER FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| THERE WITH CARE | $75,000 |
| PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY - LA | $50,000 |
| MAKE-A-WISH TRI-COUNTIES | $50,000 |
| CAREGIVERS VOLUNTEERS ASSISTING THE ELDERLY | $50,000 |
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, $3.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 57% 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 +20% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 5 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $258k 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
- URUNION RESCUE MISSION6× · 2020–2025 · $1.6M · revenue +67%
Compassion International Incorporated8× · 2017–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +16%- BFBUMBLEBEE FOUNDATION INC9× · 2017–2025 · $945k · revenue +112% · 40% of their budget
Funded once
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesone grant, 2018 · $100k · revenue +9%
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INCone grant, 2022 · $75k · revenue -40%- HSHumane Society of North Texasone grant, 2018 · $50k · revenue -5%
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.
In addition to rescue and adoption, pet orphans provides a wide range of services including education, medical/financial, spay/neuter, and training assistance.
Santa barbara humane operates two campuses located in santa barbara and santa maria providing care for community-owned and homeless animals. both campuses offer affordable high quality veterinary care, compassionate behavior training…
On a mission to connect every person facing hunger with nutritious meals by maximizing food rescue. through direct service and community partnerships, feeding san diego provides more than 26 million meals each year to children, families,…
Pets for Vets enriches the lives of veterans by creating a life-changing Super Bond with expertly selected and trained shelter or rescue pets. It provides ongoing expert support to ensure a reciprocal and thriving partnership at no cost to…
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…
To remove the "no pets allowed" sign on the doors of domestic violence shelters. women should not have to choose between leaving their abuser and leaving their pets behind to be abused.
Valley Humane Society (VHS) creates a brighter future for cats and dogs by encouraging and strengthening the bond between people and pets. VHS rescues and rehabilitates companion animals, champions responsible caretaking, shares pets'…
California Alliance of Caregivers represents the voices of relative and non-relative caregivers to promote the well-being of children in foster care. California Alliance of Caregivers provides training information support and advocacy for…
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.
See schedule orancho coastal is dedicated to the rescue and shelter of abandoned companion animals. it encourages adoptions into loving homes and provides educational and community outreach programs designed to enhance the human-animal…
To ensure every companion animal has access to quality medical care, compassionate shelter, and a loving home.
The SPCA Monterey County's Mission is assuring compassionate treatment of all animals through rescue, rehabilitation, protection and education. The SPCA shelters homeless, neglected, and abused pets, including dogs, cats, horses, exotic…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is International Guiding Eyes Inc Dba Guide Dogs of America and the most unlike its peers is Hit Living 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 22 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
35 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. 35 of the 50 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 UNION RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Compassion International Incorporated ↗
- Who funds BUMBLEBEE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CASA YOUTH SHELTER ↗
- Who funds CELIAC DISEASE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Casa Pacifica Centers for Children & Families ↗
- Who funds EMPOWER GRIEVING CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds ORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SEMPER FI & AMERICA'S FUND ↗
- Who funds International Guiding Eyes Inc DBA Guide Dogs of America ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Mark and Jacob Iskander Foundation ↗
- Who funds GREATER HOUSTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAREGIVERS VOLUNTEERS ASSISTING THE ELDERLY ↗
- Who funds EMPOWER HER NETWORK INC DBA EMPOWERED NETWORK ↗
- Who funds SOLUTIONS FOR CHANGE INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds HIT LIVING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FAMILY CAREGIVER ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds DOMUS PACIS FAMILY RESPITE INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ↗
- Who funds Humane Society of North Texas ↗
- Who funds SHOES THAT FIT ↗
- Who funds PROJECT STREET VET ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HOSPICE FOUNDAT ATTN MICHELLE WULFESTIEG ↗
- Who funds Illumination Health Home formerly The Illumination Foundation ↗
- Who funds PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY CHESAPEAKE 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: California Community Foundation · California Foundation for Stronger Communities · Sempra Foundation · Greater Houston Community Foundation · Verizon Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · National Philanthropic Trust · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Network for Good · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc
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 Foster 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.
- Empower Her Network Inc Dba Empowered Network — 47% of income from government
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 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 Foster Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Foster 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.