· Private foundation
The Joseph W Welch Jr 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 $10k15 grants · $40k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $160k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAN BRUNO EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK | $30,000 |
| SAN MATEO COUNTY HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION | $30,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO AUXLIARY FOR CHILDREN | $20,000 |
| WIRAQOCHA FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| SAN BRUNO LIONS CLUB | $15,000 |
| SOLMATEO | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| CALL PRIMROSE | $10,000 |
| RIO DELL VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT | $10,000 |
| ORDER OF MALTA CLINIC | $10,000 |
| SAN BRUNO ROTARY CLUB | $7,000 |
| CONSCIOUS CONNECTIONS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| SAN BRUNO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| ST ROBERTS CHURCH | $2,500 |
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, $90k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 54% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 97% of The Joseph W Welch Jr Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 80% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 3% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +73% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
50 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2024, 29 since wound down; 4 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $19k 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
- WCWILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC7× · 2018–2024 · $305k · revenue +296%
- SBSAN BRUNO EDUCATION FOUNDATION4× · 2017–2024 · $237k · revenue +42%
- SMSAN MATEO COUNTY HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION6× · 2019–2024 · $134k · revenue +246%
Funded once
- CCHSAAone grant, 2018 · $25k
- BABEL AIR ELEMENTARY SCHOOLone grant, 2020 · $25k
- SPSMITH-BARBIERI PROGRESSIVE FUND A CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $25k · revenue +48%
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.
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
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…
SF Partnership is an organization comprised of SF's leading employers dedicated to supporting an equitable, resilient, and vibrant economy shared by all people working and living in San Francisco. Through education, advocacy, and research,…
California Donor Table anchors a hub of donors, foundations, and community leaders. We pool together our resources to shape California into a truly democratic state that works for the people, not the powerful. Rooted in our commitment to…
The mission of the San Francisco Public Press is to enrich civic life by publishing investigative and solutions journalism that engages diverse audiences and promotes public accountability. The San Francisco Public Press…
The Sierra Fund (TSF) is a non-profit organization with a mission to restore ecosystem and community resiliency in the Sierra Nevada.
Foodwise grows thriving communities through the power and joy of local food. We envision a world that nourishes all people, local economies, and the living earth.
To ensure coast redwood forests in the santa cruz mountains thrive for generations to come. since 1900, sempervirens has protected more than 36,000 acres. learn more about our mission, vision, and strategic plan through 2030 at:…
The San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory is dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats through science and outreach.
To serve our community by providing direct access to sustainable sources of fresh produce and other unique foods, and provide education about food issues, both local and beyond.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The San Bruno Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund a Charitable 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 21 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
49 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 49 of the 85 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 WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds SAN BRUNO EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE SAN BRUNO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN MATEO COUNTY HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NORTH VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CASA of San Mateo County ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA OPEN SPACE TRUST ↗
- Who funds CALL PRIMROSE ↗
- Who funds SOJOURN TO THE PAST ↗
- Who funds WOMEN FOR CONSERVATION ↗
- Who funds WILD SOULS RANCH ↗
- Who funds BOOST OREGON ↗
- Who funds Human Investment Project Inc ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA HUMANE SOCIETY & SPCA ↗
- Who funds Nurturely ↗
- Who funds NAMI National ↗
- Who funds Jazz at the Ballroom Inc ↗
- Who funds LUCILE PACKARD FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH ↗
- Who funds San Francisco Auxiliary for Children ↗
- Who funds ABILITYPATH ↗
- Who funds Silicon Valley Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds SEA HUGGER ↗
- Who funds SMITH-BARBIERI PROGRESSIVE FUND A CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
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: Atkinson Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard Foundation · Sand Hill Foundation · Gordon E and Betty I Moore Foundation · Bothin Foundation · East Bay Community Foundation · Philanthropic Ventures Foundation · Innovia Foundation · The Collins Foundation · Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust · Monterra Community Fund
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 Joseph W Welch Jr 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.
- World Relief Corp of National Association of Evangelicals — 67% of income from government
- White Bird Clinic — 29% of income from government
- Boost Oregon — 22% of income from government
- Nurturely — 10% of income from government
- Wellmama Inc — 9% 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.
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How do I get to The Joseph W Welch Jr Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Joseph W Welch Jr 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.