· Private foundation
The Lester Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SACRED HEART SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| LENITY PROJECT INC | $5,000 |
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 (FY19–21, $56k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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 +97% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 0 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 2 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $105k 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
- NCNATIONAL COWGIRL MUSEUM AND HALL OF FAME INC2× · 2019–2023 · $100k · revenue +159%
- AHAmerican Heart Association Inc4× · 2019–2024 · $100k · revenue +43%
- LDLIVING DESERT THE2× · 2019–2021 · $68k · revenue +138%
Funded once
- ASALSAC - ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITALone grant, 2022 · $1.0M
- UOUNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTERone grant, 2021 · $500k
- GGGOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVANCYone grant, 2020 · $335k · revenue -17%
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.
MISSION STATEMENT: MISSION: CARING FOR OUR PATIENTS FIRST AND OUR PEOPLE ALWAYS. VISION: TO BE THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE, INTEGRATED AND CONNECTED HEALTH SYSTEM FOR GETTING AND STAYING WELL. VALUES: EXCELLENCE - We deliver high-quality,…
The AIA California, in collaboration with local components, is the voice of the architectural profession.
Huntington Health stands for community. We stand for compassion. But more than anything, Huntington stands for health. Providing world-class health care is our specialty, and it's what we've been doing for the San Gabriel Valley since…
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,…
Nurture empathy and connection by engaging communities with socially relevant contemporary art
To provide essential value to our members, their careers, our partners, and the public, asce will: facilitate the advancement of technology; encourage and provide the tools for lifelong learning; promote professionalism and the profession;…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
Phoenix art museum creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with art. this mission is supported by seven strategic pillars:(continued on schedule o)1. be a space…
The hammer museum at ucla believes in the promise of art and ideas to illuminate our lives and build a more just world.
As a Smithsonian Affiliate, the Aerospace Museum of California (AMC) serves as a dynamic hub for discovery, where visitors of all ages can engage with the past, present, and future of aviation and space exploration. AMC provides immersive,…
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Stand Together Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Lenity Project Inc. 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 44 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 40 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 Stand Together Foundation ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN GATE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE SEMINAR NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds Youth Entrepreneurs Inc ↗
- Who funds SONOMA VALLEY HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL COWGIRL MUSEUM AND HALL OF FAME INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds LIVING DESERT THE ↗
- Who funds Larkin Street Youth Services ↗
- Who funds Eisenhower Medical Center ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds McCallum Theatre Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF COACHELLA VALLEY ↗
- Who funds Pets Lifeline Inc ↗
- Who funds ONE PURPOSE SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ECTODERMAL DYSPLASIAS ↗
- Who funds PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Lenity Project Inc ↗
- Who funds HARMON RECOVERY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BREAKTHROUGH COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds OPERATION SAFE HOUSE 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: Marin Community Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Communities Foundation of Texas Inc · McNabb Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Orange County Community Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Lester Family 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 Lester Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Lester Family 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.