· Private foundation
The John C Mithun Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k39 grants · $765k
- $50k–250k18 grants · $1.4M
- $250k+2 grants · $750k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LOBERO THEATRE | $500,000 |
| UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| VISITING NURSE AND HOSPICE CARE OF SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION | $125,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | $120,000 |
| MISSION SCHOLARS | $115,000 |
| YMCA - SANTA BARBARA FAMILY (CHANNEL ISLANDS YMCA) | $100,000 |
| FOOD FROM THE HEART | $100,000 |
| CENTER FOR URBAN AG AT FAIRVIEW GARDENS | $80,000 |
| MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST | $75,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA PUBLIC LIBRARY | $70,000 |
| TRANSITION HOUSE OF SANTA BARBARA | $50,000 |
| SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF SANTA BARBARA | $50,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA CITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA SYMPHONY | $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 (FY17–24, $446k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 100% 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.
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 +52% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
70 repeat relationships — 46 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 7 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $180k 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
UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $990k · revenue +224%- OSOPERA SANTA BARBARA8× · 2017–2024 · $667k · revenue +16%
- MAMUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST6× · 2017–2022 · $635k · revenue +18%
Funded once
- HSHOPE SCHOOL DISTRICT EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $120k · revenue -91% · 37% of their budget
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $100k
- MWMENTAL WELLSNESS CENTERone grant, 2021 · $10k
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 santa barbara foundation (sbf) is to mobilize collective wisdom and philanthropic capital to build empathetic, inclusive and resilient communities.
To operate a school for grades 6-9, delivering a holistic program of academics, arts & athletics, community service, and outdoor education that fosters passion for life and learning, self trust, strength and courage to succeed, and…
The sbcc foundation fuels the excellence of santa barbara city college by engaging the community, building relationships, and inviting the generosity of donors. the resources raised and managed by the foundation enrich college programs,…
The mission of st. francis foundation of santa barbara is to promote and support health care.
Mission:the foundation for sbhs partners with sbhs leadership to evaluate and fund emergent needs that are outside the scope of the school budget.vision: the foundation for sbhs aims to create the premier public high school where every…
Provide cash grants and free consulting to grassroots organizations in santa barbara county.
The santa barbara zoo is dedicated to the preservation, conservation, and enhancement of the natural world and its living treasures through education, research, recreation and conservation.
Our mission is to protect public trail access build and maintain safe and sustainable trails and promote public engagement in land stewardship and trail use for all types of outdoor recreation.
To promote philanthropy to make santa cruz county a better place to live, now and in the future.we bring together people, ideas, and resources to inspire philanthropy and accomplish great things.
To improve the economic health and quality of life in the monterey bay region.
To serve the University, to involve UCSB alumni and students in its affairs and to enlist alumni talents in the preservation and promotion of UCSB's image, tradition, pride and status as a world class university.
To educate and inspire girls to become innovators and leaders in stem.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Uc Santa Barbara Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Friends of the Goleta Valley Librar. 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 33 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% 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.
50 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. 50 of the 88 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 UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPERA SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA NEIGHBORHOOD CLINICS ↗
- Who funds SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds THE LAND TRUST FOR SANTA BARBARA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds FOOD FROM THE HEART INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA CHANNELKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds VNA HEALTH ↗
- Who funds UNITY SHOPPE INC ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds VNA HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Channel Islands Young Men's Christian Association ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF CARPINTERIA ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE GOLETA VALLEY LIBRAR ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA BOTANIC GARDEN ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF GREATER SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds Mission Scholars ↗
- Who funds CALM 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: Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Santa Barbara Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · Ann Jackson Family Foundation · Mosher Foundation · Mithun Family Foundation · Towbes Foundation · June G Outhwaite Charitable Trust JS Poucher KL Englert & CM Cooney Co-Tr · La Centra-Sumerlin Foundation · Alice Tweed Tuohy Foundation · The Wood-Claeyssens Foundation · James S Bower 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 John C Mithun 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 John C Mithun Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The John C Mithun 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.