· Private foundation
The Leo J & Celia Carlin Fund
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of The Leo J & Celia Carlin Fund’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Tides Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year The Leo J & Celia Carlin Fund named its own grantees at scale: 25 organizations, $30k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Land Alliance Inc | $6,000 |
| Berkeley Symphony Orchestra | $2,000 |
| Reproductive Freedom for All | $1,500 |
| University of Chicago | $1,000 |
| Aurora Theatre Co | $1,000 |
| Berkeley Public Library Foundation | $1,000 |
| Inequality Media | $1,000 |
| San Francisco Mime Troupe | $1,000 |
| Marin Shakespeare Company | $1,000 |
| Shotgun Players | $1,000 |
| KQED | $1,000 |
| San Francisco Playhouse | $1,000 |
| The Paul Dresher Ensemble | $1,000 |
| Center for Media and Democracy | $1,000 |
| California Lawyers for the Arts | $1,000 |
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 (FY19–23, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +44% since the first grant, against +44% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2023, 17 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2023, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k 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
- SFSan Francisco Playhouse5× · 2019–2023 · $7k · revenue +64%
- RFREPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM FOR ALL5× · 2019–2023 · $7k · revenue +51%
- SFSAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE INC4× · 2019–2023 · $6k · revenue +61%
Funded once
- ASAFRICAN-AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE COMPANYgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $500 · revenue +508%
- MAMass Audubonone grant, 2019 · $500
- TFTRUST FUNDS FOR ALL CHILDREN INCone grant, 2019 · $500 · revenue -59%
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.
Aurora Theatre Company inspires new audiences and longtime theatre lovers alike with the visceral power of live theatre. Our venues, the most intimate professional stages in the Bay Area, highlight great acting, nuanced language, and an…
Sfbatco unites artists and audiences through live theatre that is reflective of the authentic perspectives and history of the san francisco bay area.
The description of Cutting Ball Theater's mission starts on Form 990 Page 1 and continues on Schedule O
Silicon valley shakespeare is innovating the classics through unique and relevant theatrical experiences that illuminate and inspire modern audiences.
Stages makes plays and tells stories that invite everyone to live more deeply and love more boldly.
Opera Parallle presents compelling performances of contemporary operas with high musical and dramatic standards, embracing modern aesthetics, creative use of technology, and social relevance as essential to the future of the art form.…
Studio Theatre produces exceptional contemporary theatre in deliberately intimate spaces, fostering a more thoughtful, more empathetic, and more connected community, in Washington DC and beyond.
SFP presents internationally acclaimed and emerging performing artists, introduces innovative programs, and builds new and diversified audiences for the arts through education and outreach activities.
To champion innovative, high-quality productions & educational theatre experiences for youth, artists, and the queer & allied communities to effect personal & societal growth, enlightenment and change.
The oregon shakespeare festival creates world-class theater, revealing our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic plays, and inspiring a love of our art form for current and future generations.
Bay Area community and increases access to literature locally and globally. The Centers publications, events, and educational programming build audiences for literature in translation, enrich the library of vital literary works, nurture…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Playground and the most unlike its peers is Poetry Flash. 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 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% 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 14% 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, 2017–2025.
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. 49 of the 74 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 TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY INC ↗
- Who funds BERKELEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds DEMOCRACY NOW PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds San Francisco Playhouse ↗
- Who funds REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM FOR ALL ↗
- Who funds Shotgun Players ↗
- Who funds THE LAND ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE INC ↗
- Who funds Berkeley Public Library Foundation ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds PLAYGROUND ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds INEQUALITY MEDIA ↗
- Who funds California Lawyers for the Arts ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATRE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR ECOLOGY AND CULTURE ↗
- Who funds BERKELEY REPERTORY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds MILL VALLEY PHILHARMONIC ↗
- Who funds BROWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Theatre Bay Area ↗
- Who funds The Edible Schoolyard Project dba The Alice Waters Institute ↗
- Who funds BERKELEY CHAMBER PERFORMANCES ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN INC ↗
- Who funds Homestead Valley Community Association ↗
- Who funds Marin Theatre Company ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA INC ↗
- Who funds CITYSIDE JOURNALISM INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds Berkeley Food Network ↗
- Who funds The Z Space Studio ↗
- Who funds KALW PUBLIC MEDIA 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: The San Francisco Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · The Bernard Osher Foundation · East Bay Community Foundation · The Zellerbach Family Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · The Rhe Charitable Foundation · Fleishhacker Foundation · The Shubert Foundation Inc · The Rock Foundation · Kenneth Rainin Foundation · The Whittier Educational 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 Leo J & Celia Carlin Fund 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.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% 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 Leo J & Celia Carlin Fund?
Find your warmest path to The Leo J & Celia Carlin Fund 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.