· Private foundation
The Little One 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 $10k11 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $318k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $495k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CREATIVE VISIONS | $230,000 |
| LOTUS LAND | $115,000 |
| REBOOT INC | $50,000 |
| BELLOSGUARDO FOUNDATION INC | $50,000 |
| IMPACT ASSETS INC | $50,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA | $30,000 |
| MENTAL WELLNESS CENTER | $25,000 |
| THE EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD PROJECT | $25,000 |
| MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST | $25,000 |
| KISS THE GROUND | $25,000 |
| THE RIVIERA RIDGE SCHOOL | $25,000 |
| UC REGENTS - UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA | $20,000 |
| FARMER'S FOOTPRINT | $20,000 |
| STORYTELLER CHILDREN'S CENTER | $15,000 |
| LIMITLESS HORIZONS IXIL | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $63k) 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 +48% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 15 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $203k 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
- CICALM INC8× · 2017–2024 · $128k · revenue +85%
- UWUNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY INC6× · 2019–2024 · $108k · revenue +66%
- SBSANTA BARBARA ZOOLOGICAL FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2019 · $80k · revenue +87%
Funded once
- MMAWone grant, 2017 · $30k
- DDAWGone grant, 2017 · $25k
- PFPartnerships For Changeone grant, 2023 · $15k · revenue +8%
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 uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
To integrate art into the lives of people, fostering imagination, stimulating thought, and creating personally rewarding experiences.
Marin humane transforms lives through exceptional animal care, humane education, and advocacy. every day, marin humane inspires compassion and positive relationships between people and animals.
The organization's mission is to mobilize resources to fight hunger in our community. to fulfill its mission, the food bank:* sources and acquires nutritious food and other products and distribute them to people experiencing nutrition…
See schedule okqed serves the people of northern california with a community-supported alternative to commercial media, providing the knowledge needed to make informed decisions; convening community dialogue; bringing the arts to everyone;…
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
To launch breakthrough climate mitigation efforts by identifying, supporting, and unleashing innovative leaders with transformative strategies.
To promote philanthropy to make santa cruz county a better place to live, now and in the future.we bring together people, ideas, and resources to inspire philanthropy and accomplish great things.
The budget center provides dependable, timely, policy guidance and public education through our independent research and analysis, public education, strategic collaborations, and communications to expand economic opportunities and promote…
The organization was established to protect and restore the santa barbara channel and its watersheds through science-based advocacy, education, field work, community engagement, and citizen enforcement of environmental laws.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Delivering Good Inc and the most unlike its peers is Forest 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 31 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
73 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. 73 of the 111 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 MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST ↗
- Who funds CALM INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds GWENDOLYN STRONG FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA ZOOLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LIMITLESS HORIZONS IXIL INC ↗
- Who funds BELLOSGUARDO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KISS THE GROUND ↗
- Who funds IMPACTASSETSINC ↗
- Who funds REBOOT INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds The Riviera Ridge School ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE MUSEE DORSAY ↗
- Who funds STATE STREET BALLET ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE AT FAIRVIEW GARDENS ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF GREATER SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds The Edible Schoolyard Project dba The Alice Waters Institute ↗
- Who funds MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION IN SANTA BARBARA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds STORYTELLER CHILDRENS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE SANTA BARBARA BIRTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds ANGELS FOSTER CARE OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds FOREST FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Partnerships For Change ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC PRIDE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FASHION FOUNDATION USA ↗
- Who funds DALMATIAN DREAMS DBA DREAM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE PERLMAN MUSIC PROGRAM 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: Santa Barbara Foundation · Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · James S Bower Foundation · Ann Jackson Family Foundation · The Lucky One Foundation · Towbes Foundation · Manitou Fund · Mosher Foundation · Rudi Schulte Family Foundation · June G Outhwaite Charitable Trust JS Poucher KL Englert & CM Cooney Co-Tr · G a Fowler Family 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 Little One 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.
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% 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 Little One Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Little One 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.