· Private foundation
The Joe MacPherson Foundation Inc
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
- $10k–50k15 grants · $365k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+4 grants · $1.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Boys and Girls Club of Central OC | $800,000 |
| Pacific Symphony | $250,000 |
| Laura's House | $250,000 |
| Big Brothers Big Sisters of OC | $250,000 |
| Meals on Wheels | $200,000 |
| Second Harvest of OC | $200,000 |
| Brackens Kitchen | $100,000 |
| Orangewood Childrens Fdn | $100,000 |
| Community Action Partnership OC | $100,000 |
| CASA | $75,000 |
| OC Rescue Mission | $50,000 |
| Homeboy Industries | $50,000 |
| Hoag Hospital Foundation | $50,000 |
| Share Our Selves | $50,000 |
| Pathways of Hope | $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, $2.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 1% 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.
35 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 11 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $415k 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
- LHLAURA'S HOUSE9× · 2017–2025 · $2.5M · revenue +49%
- PSPacific Symphony9× · 2017–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +87%
- OFORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2025 · $290k · revenue +83%
Funded once
- BAB and C Club of Central Orange Coasone grant, 2022 · $280k
- BABoys and Girls Club Central Orangeone grant, 2017 · $190k
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL ORANGE COASTgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue +108%
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.
Habitat for humanity's mission is to give witness to the christian gospel by working with god's people to build decent habitats for those who are inadequately sheltered in orange county.
The California Housing Partnership Corporation creates and preserves affordable and sustainable homes for Californians with low incomes by providing expert financial and policy solutions to nonprofit and public partners.
The organization develops and operates high quality affordable housing and provides resident services for low-income families, seniors and people with special needs.
Community of hope's mission is to improve health, end homelessness, and partner with communities to make washington, dc more equitable.
The mission of catholic charities of orange county is to provide service to people in need, promote their voice in society, and to call the church and all people to do the same."
Pomona community health center's mission is to be the medical home for the underserved in our community by providing high quality preventive and primary care health services.
Mercy house's most significant exempt activities focus on ending homelessness and providing comprehensive housing and support services. the organization offers homeless prevention, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and…
Community housingworks ("chw or the organization") is a nonprofit california corporation incorporated on june 20, 1988. chw believes that opportunity begins with a stable home. the organization provides and builds life-changing affordable…
Advance the highest quality of home and community-based care.
The primary exempt purpose of children's healthcare of california includes without limitation the receipt of distributions and grants for the making of distributions and grants to children's hospital of orange county (choc) and to…
The organization provides primary medical, behavior health, and dental care to the population of san joaquin, and solano counties without regard to patients' ability to pay.
Children's house international provides ethical adoption services, child focused recruitment, and family support. we support disadvantaged children with humanitarian aid in countries worldwide.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Orange County Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Orange Home Grown Foundation Inc. 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 36 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 63 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 LAURA'S HOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND ↗
- Who funds Pacific Symphony ↗
- Who funds ORANGEWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOAG HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Brackens Kitchen Inc ↗
- Who funds HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES ↗
- Who funds THE PRIORITY CENTER ENDING THE GENERATIONAL CYCLE ↗
- Who funds Share Our Selves Corporation ↗
- Who funds CHOC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMIGOS DE LOS NINOS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ACTION PARTNERSHIP OF ORANGE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Working Wardrobes For A New Start ↗
- Who funds ORANGE UNIFIED PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COTTONWOOD DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FRIENDLY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL ORANGE COAST ↗
- Who funds Orange County Rescue Mission Inc ↗
- Who funds CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY ↗
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: Orange County Community Foundation · The Devto Support Foundation · O L Halsell Foundation · Sisters of St Joseph Healthcare Foundation · Farmers & Merchants Bank Foundation · California Foundation for Stronger Communities · St Joseph Health System Foundation · Warne Family Charitable Foundation Co First Foundation Bank · Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian · Orange County's United Way · Argyros Family Foundation · Edwards Lifesciences 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 Joe MacPherson Foundation Inc 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 Joe MacPherson Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Joe MacPherson Foundation Inc 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.