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· Private foundation

The Kao Family 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.

$40k
Granted FY2023
2
Grants FY2023
1
States reached
$20k
Largest
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2023.

Education$366kPhilanthropy$256kRecreation & Sports$125kReligion$110kHealth$102kYouth Development$12kInternational$3k
02FY2023 · 2 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$20,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$46k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Individual grant recipient$20,000
Individual grant recipient$20,000
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 90% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY: $100k → 8%MISSION HOSPITAL FOUNDATION: $100k → 10%UCLA ANDERSON: $20k → 14%LINKS PLAYERS: $20k → 19%ECHOING GREEN: $150k → 17%NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY: $15k → 14%SUSAN KAO DONOR ADVISED FUND: $256k → 10%UCLA: $20k → 14%LINKS PLAYERS: $10k → 19%NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY: $10k → 14%ALZHEIMER'S ORANGE COUNTY: $2k → 10%UCLA: $20k → 14%LINKS PLAYERS: $10k → 19%ST MARGARET'S EPISCOPAL SCHOOL: $40k → 10%UCLA: $100k → 14%ST MARGARETS: $2k → 10%MARINERS CHURCH: $20k → 10%ENCOURAGEMENT FOR LIFE: $20k → 10%KENTON BESHORE: $20k → 10%ENCOURAGEMENT FOR LIFE: $20k → 10%HEBREW ACADEMY: $4k → 10%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

25%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$245k · 4 repeat orgs$729k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +62% since the first grant, against +39% for those funded once.

4 repeat relationships: 0 still active in FY2023, 4 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

4
11

Total granted

$245k
$689k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+62%
+39%

Still filing today

50%
36%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2023, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $40k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’20’21’22’23
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’20’21’22’23
EducationHealthRecreation & SportsPhilanthropyOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • U
    UCLA
    2× · 2018–2021 · $140k
  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    2× · 2021–2022 · $40k
  • EF
    Encouragement for Life
    2× · 2020–2021 · $40k · revenue +62%

Funded once

  • SK
    SUSAN KAO DONOR ADVISED FUND
    one grant, 2022 · $256k
  • EG
    ECHOING GREEN INC
    one grant, 2022 · $150k · revenue -35%
  • MISSION HOSPITAL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTERgraduated
    one grant, 2017 · $100k · revenue +51%
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

6 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 6 of the 17 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
6/6
Grantees still filing
5/6
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

SUSAN KAO DONOR ADVISED FUND: $255,944 · OtherSUSAN KAO DONOR ADVISED FUNDUCLA: $140,000 · OtherUCLAST MARGARETS EPISCOPAL SCHOOL: $40,300 · OtherST MARGARETS EPISCOPAL SCHOOLIndividual grant recipient: $40,000 · OtherIndividual grant recipientIndividual grant recipient: $20,000 · OtherIndividual grant recipient: $20,000 · OtherMARINERS CHURCH: $20,000 · Other+4 more: $20,553 · OtherECHOING GREEN INC: $150,000 · EducationECHOING GREEN INCPRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE: $100,000 · EducationPRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES S…MISSION HOSPITAL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER: $100,000 · HealthMISSION HOS…+1 more: $2,000 · HealthEncouragement for Life: $40,000 · PhilanthropyNorthwestern University: $25,000 · Recreation & Sports
Other$556,797Education$250,000Health$102,000Philanthropy$40,000Recreation & Sports$25,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetECHOING GREEN INC: $150,000 over 1y, 0.8% of budgetMISSION HOSPITAL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER: $100,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetPRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE: $100,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetEncouragement for Life: $40,000 over 2y, 7.5% of budgetNorthwestern University: $25,000 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetALZHEIMER'S ORANGE COUNTY: $2,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds ECHOING GREEN INC ↗
  • Who funds MISSION HOSPITAL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER ↗
  • Who funds PRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE ↗
  • Who funds Encouragement for Life ↗
  • Who funds Northwestern University ↗
  • Who funds ALZHEIMER'S ORANGE COUNTY ↗

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Natl Christian Charitable Fdn IncGA9× affinity4 shared granteesties to 2 of 2Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Kao Family Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Kao Family Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%1%3%6%10%funder's share of their income ↑0%5%10%15%20%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–20%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 17 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2023, the most recent year this funder made grants.

    Source object · view filing

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