How much did The McConnell Foundation grant in FY2024?

Arts & Culture$20MEducation$13MPhilanthropy$9.0MEnvironment$3.1MHuman Services$3.0MCommunity Improvement$2.7MInternational$2.2MHealth$2.1MEmployment$1.4MOther$36M

02beneath the categories

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.

…and in their own words, year by year

2018

yosemitein-kind meatmeat purchasedpurchased livestocklivestock auctionsauctions lbsparadise

2019

in-kind meatmeat purchasedpurchased livestocklivestock auctionsauctions lbsrootsvista scholars

2020

womensvista scholarsscholarshipscholars scholarsgraduation celebrationsscholars vistaleague

2021

computersrunsalt creekcreek trailtrojan athleticsoliviewcovid

2022

spay neutergrowpope's classukrainescholars scholarsexpansionmerced

2023

donations madelee memorymemory geoffgeoff grinolsthird partyparty payeesls bike

2024

scholars gatewayvolleyballkatelynseptemberutility subsidyconflictfood donations

Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.

03FY2024 · 129 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k83 grants · $301k
$10k–50k24 grants · $507k
$50k–250k9 grants · $876k
$250k+13 grants · $10.0M

$7,450

Median grant

States reached

$571M

Total assets

Largest grants

Redding City of$3,462,391
Turtle Bay Exploration Park$1,588,581
Shasta Regional Community Foundation$1,094,994
Shasta College Foundation$617,000
Siskiyou County Job Council$500,000
Shasta County Office of Education$453,000
Natural Resource Conflict Transformation Center - Nepal (NRCTC)$403,000
Shasta Living Streets$350,926
College OPTIONS Inc$350,000
Viva Downtown Redding$340,779
The Asia Foundation$300,000
Mahila Shakti Bikash Kendra Nepal (MSBKN)$250,000
California State Grange Foundation$250,000
California State University Chico$150,831
Advance Redding$150,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $1.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14% — the area typically sits at 10%. 100% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.

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, United Way ALICE — 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 5% of The McConnell 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, 92% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 89% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.

The McConnell Foundationlessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address · 7.4% directed abroad (not shown)

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.

03Your edge

repeat funding

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.

90%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$83M · 207 repeat orgs$9.4M to everyone else

207 repeat relationships — 97 still active in FY2024, 110 since wound down; 30 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

207

162

Total granted

$83M

$8.6M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+29%

Still filing today

53%

48%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $827k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EducationHuman ServicesArts & CulturePhilanthropyEnvironmentInternationalOther

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

SC
Shasta College Foundation
8× · 2017–2024 · $6.5M · revenue +844% · 27% of their budget
CO
College OPTIONS Inc
7× · 2017–2024 · $4.6M · revenue +113% · 85% of their budget
SL
Shasta Land Trust
7× · 2017–2024 · $2.3M · revenue +857%

Funded once

B7
Block 7 Retail Investors LLC
one grant, 2021 · $3.8M
SC
Shasta County Young Mens Christian Associationgraduated
one grant, 2020 · $1.4M · revenue +77% · 44% of their budget
MM
Mayers Memorial Hospital District
one grant, 2019 · $1.0M

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

University of California

To raise and manage private funds to support uci's broader mission of excellence in teaching, research and public service.

Education

Sierra Foothill Conservancy

Protect, manage and preserve lands and wildlife having unique natural resources and cultural qualities within and near the foothills of the sierra nevada range.

Environment

California State University Fresno

Student Services California State University, Fresno

Education

California State University Fresno

The auxiliary organization was formed to operate and manage division i intercollegiate athletic programs at california state university, fresno.

—

Northern California Indian

Research, develop, and administer social and economic development programs to meet the needs of indian and native american communities.

—

Pitzer College

Pitzer College is an educational institution focusing on undergraduate education.

Education

Sierra Nevada College

To combine the liberal arts and professional preparedness through an interdisciplinary curriculum.

—

Southern California Public Radio

Noncommercial educational public radio production and broadcasting.

Arts & Culture

The Uc Davis Foundation

The mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.

Education

Uc Santa Barbara Foundation

To advance UC Santa Barbara's capacity to educate future generations, unlock new discoveries, and enrich California and the world.

Education

California State University Foundation

The mission of the california state university foundation is to enhance the educational excellence of the california state university in teaching, learning, community service, and applied research.

Philanthropy

California State University Dominguez

The organization's primary purpose is to assist csu, dominguez hills in various activities.

—

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Western Folklife Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is Peter Britt Gardens Music and Arts. 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.

the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side

Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 30 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) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.8% lost their exemption, against 12% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

0.8%2/246

the rest of the field

12%

22,288/186,732

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.

06the grantee network

211 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

201/211

Grantees still filing

141/211

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$41,434,078Arts & Culture$20,241,868Education$12,672,025Philanthropy$9,009,518Environment$3,055,114Human Services$2,970,193Community Improvement$2,706,673

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.

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.

Community Foundation of the NorthCA101.9× affinity48 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Community Foundation of the North · Dignity Health · United Way of Northern California · The California Endowment · Ralphs Prather Ranch Foundation · The Ford Family Foundation · California Foundation For · North Valley Community Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · Sierra Health Foundation · Humboldt Area Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard 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 organisation The McConnell 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.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

2get no government money at all

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–24

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. 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.

05Through Plinth

Through Plinth

Your grantmaking, live and operational

This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: Viva Downtown Redding.

Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk

Financial management

low risk

~6 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 8 filed years.

Track record & reputation

low risk

8 years of Form 990 filings, still active; revenue up 8.0× since.

Legal standing

low risk

US 501(c)(3); EIN 680385875 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.

Governance

Live in Plinth

Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.

Compliance & sanctions

Live in Plinth

OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.

Program capacity

Live in Plinth

Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.

Live · Plinth’s real DD engine

Run the actual assessment on Viva Downtown Redding, cold from public data.

Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.

Post-award monitoring · continuous checks

On trackFinancial stability— Roughly 6 months of cash on hand.
On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue grew over the period.
WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 95% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.

What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.

Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing

Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro

How do I get to The McConnell Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The McConnell Foundation through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.

Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.

The McConnell Foundation

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Where the work is directed

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

211 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to The McConnell Foundation?

More from the funding graph

The McConnell Foundation

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Where the work is directed

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

211 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to The McConnell Foundation?

More from the funding graph