· Private foundation
The Looker 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k10 grants · $37k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $197k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHILDREN'S CREATIVE PROJECT | $40,000 |
| MOMENTUM WHEELS FOR HUMANITY | $25,000 |
| ST MARGARET'S CENTER | $20,000 |
| SKOWHEGAN SCHOOL OF PTNG AND SCULP | $20,000 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER | $15,000 |
| THE OJAI RAPTOR CENTER | $12,500 |
| HELP OF OJAI INC | $12,000 |
| UCSD STUDENT-RUN FREE CLINIC PROJECT | $12,000 |
| SCHOOL ON WHEELS | $10,000 |
| BROTHER BENNO'S CENTER | $9,000 |
| CYCLING WITHOUT AGE SANTA BARBARA | $6,000 |
| DOCTOR'S WITHOUT BORDERS (MSF USA) | $5,000 |
| DIRECT RELIEF INTERNATIONAL | $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 (FY18–24, $223k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 81% 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 8% of The Looker 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. Read by recipient address, 77% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 70% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +55% since the first grant, against +32% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 3 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11k 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
- CCCHILDRENS CREATIVE PROJECT7× · 2018–2024 · $207k · revenue +32%
- SSSKOWHEGAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING AND SCULPTURE INC7× · 2018–2024 · $190k · revenue +48%
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES OF LOS ANGELES INC7× · 2018–2024 · $137k · revenue +48%
Funded once
- SJST JOSEPH CENTERone grant, 2022 · $40k · revenue +17%
- SBSanta Barbara Bucket Brigadegraduatedone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +119%
- CHChildren's Hospital Los Angelesone grant, 2019 · $5k · 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.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
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,…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
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…
Food forward fights hunger and prevents food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce, connecting this abundance with people experiencing food insecurity, and inspiring others to do the same.
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.
Hollywood food coalition welcomes people to dinner each night. we rescue and redistribute food daily to other organizations. we care for our immediate community through our wellness program. we build community with and through our…
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
To distribute public affairs and other educational information in order to create an electronic bridge between californians and their public officials, and, in the process educate a new generation of voting citizens and civic leaders who…
The ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
To improve the quality of life for the diverse communities we serve providing affordable and comprehensive healthcare and education in a welcoming multi-cultural environment.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Santa Barbara Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Childrens Creative Project. 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 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 — 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.
28 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. 28 of the 42 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 CHILDRENS CREATIVE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds SKOWHEGAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING AND SCULPTURE INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF LOS ANGELES INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds HELP OF OJAI INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Ojai Raptor Center ↗
- Who funds NO LIMITS THEATER GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds SCHOOL ON WHEELS INC ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MOMENTUM WHEELS FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds ST JOSEPH CENTER ↗
- Who funds NETWORK FOR GOOD ↗
- Who funds Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds GOLETA EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Utah Pride Center Inc ↗
- Who funds HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Los Angeles ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND ↗
- Who funds GREATER GOODS OJAI ↗
- Who funds Center on Halsted ↗
- Who funds HONOR THE EARTH ↗
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 · American Endowment Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Network for Good · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Looker 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.