· Private foundation
The Lef 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 $10k39 grants · $126k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $334k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $125k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIONDOCS | $75,000 |
| FILMMAKERS COLLABORATIVE INC | $50,000 |
| CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INC | $45,000 |
| POINTS NORTH INSTITUTE | $40,000 |
| WOMEN MAKE MOVIES INC - AMANDA KOWA | $32,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| EXPERIMENTAL SOUND STUDIO - JODIE M | $25,000 |
| DOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INC | $25,000 |
| COLOR CONGRESS | $25,000 |
| TUFTS UNIVERSITY - RICCARDO GIACCON | $20,000 |
| MIRABEL PICTURES - BANKER WHITE | $15,000 |
| FILM FORUM - LUKE MEYER | $15,000 |
| MUSEUM OF CERAMIC ARTSNY | $11,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
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, $185k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 93% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 12% of The Lef 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.
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 +39% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
83 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2025, 52 since wound down; 24 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $238k 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
THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INC8× · 2017–2025 · $544k · revenue +396%- DEDOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INC8× · 2017–2025 · $320k · revenue +34%
- CCCALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS6× · 2017–2024 · $283k · revenue +33%
Funded once
- CCCREATIVE CAPITAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $40k · revenue -29%
- SGSHINE GLOBAL INCone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue -20%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $25k
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 california film institute celebrates film and videos as art and education. its goal is to present and support emerging and established independent filmakers whose works address issues relevant to contemporary society. this is…
Guided by artists, rooted in new mexico, site santa fe celebrates contemporary creative expression.
SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM connects and inspires audiences, students and teachers, and filmmakers through our film…
Northwest Film Forum incites public dialogue and creative action through collective cinematic experiences. A nonprofit film and arts center located in Seattle, Northwest Film Forum presents hundreds of films, festivals, community events,…
Siff is a seattle-based 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit dedicated to the creation of vibrant experiences and spaces that champion film discovery and arts education.
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
The center for arts, design and social research is a private, nonprofit institution of higher education that provides instruction in and conducts research on the relationship of art and design to global societies. the center offers…
To encourage, sponsor, and promote innovative work in the arts created and presented by individuals, groups, and organizations.
Sundance institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the discovery and development of independent artists and audiences.
Marin open studios is a non-profit visual arts organization dedicated to engaging and supporting marin county artists and their audiences through events, programs and services. marin open studios champions a diverse and inclusive community…
To invest in america's finest artists and illuminate the value of artists to society.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Conservation Colorado Education Fund and the most unlike its peers is Calistoga Cares Food Bank 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 30 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
129 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. 129 of the 221 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 THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INC ↗
- Who funds DOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds UNIONDOCS INC ↗
- Who funds Points North Institute ↗
- Who funds Progress Unity Fund ↗
- Who funds THE FILMMAKERS COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds THE BAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL FILM SEMINARS INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN MAKE MOVIES INC ↗
- Who funds FILMMAKERS COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds Color Congress ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENT FEATURE PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds WESTCHESTER INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds Calistoga Art Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Tikkun Olam Productions Inc ↗
- Who funds METEOR FILMS INC ↗
- Who funds PRESIDENT AND TRUSTEES OF BATES COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CREATIVE CAPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROADRUNNER FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds WATERSHED CENTER FOR THE CERAMIC ARTS ↗
- Who funds ALBUQUERQUE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DREAMSPRING ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds CRAFT EMERGENCY RELIEF FUND INC ↗
- Who funds SHINE GLOBAL INC ↗
- Who funds BRAIN ARTS ORGANIZATION INC ↗
- Who funds WALKING IRIS MEDIA ↗
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: Santa Fe Community Foundation · Albuquerque Community Foundation · Boston Foundation Inc · Marshall L and Perrine D McCune Charitable Foundation Inc · The San Francisco Foundation · Thornburg Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc · Impactassetsinc · Pnm Tnmp Foundation · The Andrew W Mellon Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma
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 Lef 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Vermont Folklife Center — 90% of income from government
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- Upstander Project Inc — 33% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Anikaya Akhra Inc — 18% of income from government
- Chittenden Community Television — 14% of income from government
- The Center for Independent Documentary Inc — 6% of income from government
- Neskowin Coast Foundation — 2% of income from government
- Brattle Film Foundation Inc — 1% of income from government
- Endicott College — 1% of income from government
- The Filmmakers Collaborative Inc — 1% of income from government
- Documentary Educational Resources Inc — 1% of income from government
- Coolidge Corner Theatre Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Emerson College — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Lef Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Lef 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.