· Private foundation
Masson-Shaffer Family 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 · $43k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $116k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Chapman University | $50,000 |
| United Way of OC | $41,000 |
| Bowers Museum | $30,000 |
| Laguna Beach HS Water Polo | $20,000 |
| Girls Inc | $15,000 |
| Action in Africa | $10,000 |
| National Park Foundation | $9,000 |
| Orange County Sheriff's Advisory Co | $7,500 |
| Boys Girls Club | $6,272 |
| Laguna Playhouse | $5,462 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| City of Hope | $5,000 |
| Laguna Plein Air Painters Associati | $1,500 |
| Laguna Art Museum | $1,200 |
| Hillcrest Academy | $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 (FY22–23, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +51% since the first grant, against +32% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 4 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k 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
- CUCHAPMAN UNIVERSITY6× · 2017–2024 · $330k · revenue +62%
MISSION HOSPITAL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER4× · 2017–2022 · $33k · revenue +51%- UWUSA WATER POLO INC6× · 2017–2023 · $29k · revenue +71%
Funded once
- TUTHE ULI FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $30k · revenue +97%
- OIOCEAN INSTITUTEone grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue -11%
- LSLHBS Scholarship Foundationone grant, 2019 · $10k
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The aquarium of the pacific's mission is to instill a sense of wonder, respect, and stewardship for the pacific ocean, its inhabitants, and ecosystems.
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…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
To advocate for policy changes by governments and corporations in order to preserve ocean life and return the oceans to their former abundance.
Advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all. the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society and a leading publisher of cutting-edge research through its science family of journals,…
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
The foundation's mission is to improve the oral health of all californians by supporting the dental profession and its efforts to meet community needs.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Naples zoo is accredited by the american zoo & aquarium association (aza) and has numerous animal exhibits placed on its 45-acre site. (continued on schedule o)each exhibit is unique and designed to simulate typical conditions for the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Families Forward and the most unlike its peers is Small Steps for Compassion. 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 41 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.
30 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. 30 of the 64 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 CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE ↗
- Who funds CHARLES W BOWERS MUSEUM CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds MISSION HOSPITAL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE ULI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds USA WATER POLO INC ↗
- Who funds ACTION IN AFRICA INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds OCEAN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds LAGUNA ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds THE SURFRIDER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFFS ADVISORY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds SHATTUCK-ST MARY'S SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds LAGUNA FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds MIRACLES FOR KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds HAWAII COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
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: Orange County Community Foundation · O L Halsell Foundation · Argyros Family Foundation · Laguna Beach Community Foundation · The William Jeff and Jennifer Gross Family Foundation · Edwards Lifesciences Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Weaver Family Private Foundation · The Hanauer Family Foundation · Roberta Freeman Cox Charitable Foundation · Farmers & Merchants Bank Foundation · Sempra 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 Masson-Shaffer 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 Masson-Shaffer Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Masson-Shaffer 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.