· Private foundation
The Heck Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k101 grants · $178k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $73k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CANINE COMPANIONS | $100,000 |
| SONOMA STATE UNIV | $30,000 |
| SRJC FOUNDATION | $12,500 |
| REDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK | $10,000 |
| ACTIVE 20-30 CLUB | $10,000 |
| CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF SONOMA COUNTY | $10,000 |
| LUTHER BURBANK MEMORIAL FOUNDATION | $7,000 |
| NATIONS FINEST | $6,000 |
| RIVER TO COAST CHILDREN'S SERVICES | $6,000 |
| CHP 11-99 FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF SANTA ROSA | $5,000 |
| FAMILY JUSTICE CENTER | $5,000 |
| SONOMA COUNTY FIRE DISTRICT | $5,000 |
| COMMUNITY SUPPORT NETWORK | $5,000 |
| SANTA ROSA SYMPHONY ASSOC | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $504k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 0% 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.
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 +45% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
160 repeat relationships — 101 still active in FY2025, 59 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- CCCANINE COMPANIONS FOR INDEPENDENCE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $453k · revenue +76%
- REREDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK9× · 2017–2025 · $115k · revenue +118%
- CMCHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF SONOMA COUNTY9× · 2017–2025 · $55k · revenue +165%
Funded once
- RCREDWOOD CREDIT UNION COMMUNITY FUND INCone grant, 2018 · $15k · revenue -76%
- BIBATTLESHIP IOWA MUSEUMone grant, 2018 · $5k
- PPPETALUMA POLICING FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $2k
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 Solano Community Foundation strengthens Solano County by advancing equity, supporting nonprofit resilience, and expanding access to philanthropy. We serve as a community leader, responsive grantmaker, and trusted partner for donors who…
Address the homeless crisis in California.
Sonoma County Conservation Action's mission is to better our quality of life in Sonoma County for all generations, through educating and directly engaging the public on local environmental issues and policies using grassroots organizing.
Advocates for abused, neglected and other identified children within the court system, with the belief that every child is entitled to a safe and stable home.
Sonoma Valley Health and recreation Association (Sonoma Splash) is dedicated to providing a sustainable state of the art multi-use aquatic and recreation facility accessible to all Sonoma Valley residents for aquatic education and safety,…
Homes for Sonoma is a nonprofit developer creating quality workforce housing options that support safe and sustainable community, and finds efficient, scalable solutions to address the housing crisis in Sonoma County and throughout…
The Mission of the Symons Family Fund is to benefit, perform the functions of, and carry out the purposes of the Sonora Area Foundation that engage in charitable activities which benefit the residents of Tuolumne County, California.
To provide health care for retired k-9 deputies. educate the public in the roll k-9 deputies play in law enforcment
Strengthens its community through assisting donors, making grants, and providing leadership.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is River to Coast Children's Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Korean War Memorial 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 32 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
104 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. 104 of the 215 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 CANINE COMPANIONS FOR INDEPENDENCE INC ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF SONOMA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SONOMA COUNTY VINTNERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHP 11-99 FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WEST COUNTY HEALTH CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds Community Support Network ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR THOUGHT ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF SANTA ROSA ↗
- Who funds SANTA ROSA SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CONTRA COSTA FAMILY JUSTICE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds KLAAS KIDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LUTHER BURBANK MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation ↗
- Who funds RIVER TO COAST CHILDREN'S SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD GOSPEL MISSIONS ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds SCOTT HAMILTON CARES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATION'S FINEST ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD CREDIT UNION COMMUNITY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE CERES COMMUNITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Free to Be ↗
- Who funds Pacific Coast Air Museum ↗
- Who funds Lilys Legacy Senior Dog Sanctuary ↗
- Who funds Side By Side ↗
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: Sonoma County Community Foundation · McNabb Foundation · Sonoma County Vintners Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · Bothin Foundation · Exchange Bank Foundation · Speedway Children's Charities · Trione Foundation · The William G Irwin Charity Foundation · Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Foundation · Codding Foundation · Redwood Credit Union Community Fund 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 Heck 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 Heck Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Heck 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.