· Public charity
The Ocean Foundation
As the only community foundation for the ocean, The Ocean Foundation's 501(c)(3) mission is to improve global ocean health, climate resilience, and the blue economy.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 24 grants below total $866,993 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,869,109 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $3,002,116 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $8k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $417k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $442k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The Leland Stanford Junior University | $127,888 |
| Marine Debris Foundation | $96,520 |
| Race to Zero Films LLC | $91,000 |
| Playa Viva LLC | $76,980 |
| LSU Foundation | $50,000 |
| Coastal Coordination Program LLC | $45,294 |
| Anchor Coalition Inc | $44,160 |
| National Marine Sanctuary Fdn | $41,935 |
| International Indigenous Fund Batani | $35,000 |
| The Pew Charitable Trusts | $31,141 |
| Ecolibrium Inc | $31,000 |
| Deep Green Wilderness | $20,500 |
| Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies | $20,000 |
| World Wide Wallace LLC | $19,350 |
| Mariana Islands Nature Alliance | $18,000 |
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 US giving — 85% of grant dollars ($6.1M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 15% that went abroad ($1.0M) is mapped below.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 63% of your 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
Beyond the US — 15% of all-years giving ($1.0M)
2 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
Grants abroad, by region — $1.8M on the FY2025 return
Schedule F, as filed: 8 regions, $1.4M to organizations and $390k to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: General Support · Marine Life Monitoring · Research
Stated purpose: General Support · Marine Life Monitoring
Stated purpose: General Support · Marine Life Monitoring · General Support & Marine Conservation
Stated purpose: General Support · General Support,Marine Conservation & Remove Marine Debris & Marine Life Monitoring
Stated purpose: General Support · Remove Marine Debris · General Support & Remove Marine Debris
Stated purpose: General Support · General Support,Research & Scholarship
Stated purpose: General Support · Marine Conservation · Research
Stated purpose: General Support
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 11% of The Ocean 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.
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 +56% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 20 since wound down; 12 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, 54% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $337k 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
- SSSMELTS SEA MAMMAL EDUCATION LEARNING TECHNOLOGY SOCIETY4× · 2020–2024 · $225k · revenue +211% · 36% of their budget
- SISECORE INTERNATIONAL INC2× · 2021–2024 · $180k · revenue +113%
- PAPADI AWARE FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2025 · $135k · revenue +69%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF OREGONone grant, 2023 · $125k
UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $120k · revenue +63%- PFPARLIAMENTARIANS FOR GLOBAL ACTIONone grant, 2024 · $50k · revenue 0%
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.
Ocean conservancy unites science, people, and policy to protect our ocean, today and for generations to come.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Protecting and promoting the marine biodiversity of Hawai'i through coral restoration, ecological monitoring, regenerative tourism, and cultural integration
The institutes mission is to cultivate a responsibility for the natural environment and our human communities through interdisciplinary science education.
Save threatened marine life using pioneering research, education, and sustainable conservation solutions
To advocate for policy changes by governments and corporations in order to preserve ocean life and return the oceans to their former abundance.
Our research has demonstrated that corals can adapt to the effects of environmental stressors if immediate threats are reduced and if we protect healthy, ecologically connected networks of reefs.
To mobilize people in local communities around the world to protect marine wildlife and the oceans and inland watersheds that sustain them.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and the most unlike its peers is International Indigenous Fund for Development and Solidarity Batani. 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 29 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 13% 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, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 73 of the 109 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 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds SMELTS SEA MAMMAL EDUCATION LEARNING TECHNOLOGY SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds SECORE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds Marine Debris Foundation ↗
- Who funds PADI AWARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OCEAN RISK AND RESILIENCE ACTION ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds MARINE CONSERVATION BIOLOGY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE VIEQUES CONSERVATION AND HISTORICAL TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds The Pew Charitable Trusts ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds RESTORE AMERICA'S ESTUARIES ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds PARLIAMENTARIANS FOR GLOBAL ACTION ↗
- Who funds VIRGIN UNITE USA INC ↗
- Who funds LSU FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS ↗
- Who funds EARTHECHO INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds NETCENTRIC CAMPAIGNS ↗
- Who funds Ocean River Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY 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: Resources Legacy Fund · The Pew Charitable Trusts · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · The Marisla Foundation · The Schmidt Family Foundation · Patagoniaorg · The Curtis & Edith Munson Foundation · National Marine Sanctuary Foundation · The Overbrook Foundation · Builders Vision Foundation · The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment Inc
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 Ocean 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.
- National Marine Sanctuary Foundation — 88% of income from government
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — 63% of income from government
- See Turtles — 11% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- University of Miami — 5% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- Lower Nehalem Community Trust — 2% of income from government
- National Aquarium Inc — 1% 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 Ocean Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ocean 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.