· Private foundation
The Gamble Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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
- $10k–50k12 grants · $330k
- $50k–250k15 grants · $820k
- $250k+1 grant · $305k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE GF FUND | $305,000 |
| MENDOCINO COUNTY RESOURCE CONSERVATION DISTRICT | $60,000 |
| TRIBAL ECO RESTORATION ALLIANCE | $60,000 |
| AGRICULTURE AND LAND BASED TRAINING ASSOCIATION | $60,000 |
| CALIFORNIA FARMLINK | $60,000 |
| FARM TO GROW INC | $60,000 |
| EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE | $60,000 |
| KITCHEN TABLE ADVISORS | $60,000 |
| CULTURAL CONSERVANCY SACRED LAND FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| CENTER FOR LAND-BASED LEARNING | $50,000 |
| COMMUNITY ALLIANCE WITH FAMILY FARMER FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| AUDUBON CANYON RANCH INC | $50,000 |
| SUSTAINABLE CONSERVATION | $50,000 |
| RIVER PARTNERS | $50,000 |
| GOLD RIDGE RESOURCE CONSERVATION DISTRICT | $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 (FY18–18, $41k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 2% of those 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 +104% since the first grant, against +39% for the ones you funded once.
74 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 61 since wound down; 15 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, 54% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $670k 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
- CFCALIFORNIA FARMLINK8× · 2017–2024 · $359k · revenue +200%
- SCSustainable Conservation8× · 2017–2024 · $353k · revenue +104%
- ACAUDUBON CANYON RANCH INC8× · 2017–2024 · $295k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- NCNORTH COAST OPPORTUNITIES - VALLEY FIRE RELIEF FUNDone grant, 2017 · $100k
- RSRCD SHARED COMM RESOURCEone grant, 2021 · $75k
- CFCOMMUNITY FOUNDATION NAPAone grant, 2020 · $50k
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.
The mission of the California Farmland Trust is to help farmers protect the best farmland in the world.
The California Wilderness Coalition protects the natural landscapes that make California unique, providing clean air and water, a home to wildlife, and a place for recreation and spiritual renewal.
At Yosemite Rivers Alliance, we unite conservation and community to protect and restore the three rivers that ?ow through the Yosemite Regionthe Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Merced.
We conserve the lands and waters of California's heartland.
The purpose of the organization is to monitor, manage, and preserve conservation easements it stewards in northern california. the organization acquires conservation easements in land exhibiting important natural features to protect and…
California Coastkeeper Alliance unites Waterkeeper programs statewide to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
The Sierra Fund (TSF) is a non-profit organization with a mission to restore ecosystem and community resiliency in the Sierra Nevada.
Oregon agricultural trust partners with farmers and ranchers to protect agricultural lands for the benefit of oregons economy, communities, and landscapes.
Land trust of santa cruz county (the organization) was incorporated in california as a not-for-profit corporation in 1978. the mission of the organization is to protect, care for, and connect all people to the vibrant natural and working…
Promote conservation easements and resource management plans that conserve agriculture lands, forestlands, wildlife habitat, open space, and other natural resources, in perpetuity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is California Rangeland Trust and the most unlike its peers is Tomkat Ranch Educational Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 29 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
62 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. 62 of the 128 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 CALIFORNIA FARMLINK ↗
- Who funds Sustainable Conservation ↗
- Who funds SAVORY INSTITUTEORG INC ↗
- Who funds AUDUBON CANYON RANCH INC ↗
- Who funds PEPPERWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds POINT REYES BIRD OBSERVATORY ↗
- Who funds Earth Island Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds RIVER PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds Center for Land-Based Learning ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLIER ↗
- Who funds KITCHEN TABLE ADVISORS ↗
- Who funds Wild Farm Alliance ↗
- Who funds Urban Tilth ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA RANGELAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds SONOMA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Farms to Grow 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: Marin Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Resources Legacy Fund · Clif Family Foundation · Tomkat Ranch Educational Foundation · Community Foundation for San Benito County · Community Foundation Santa Cruz County · Sonoma County Community Foundation · Patagoniaorg · The Schmidt Family Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Community Foundation of the Napa Valley
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 Gamble 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 Gamble Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Gamble 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.