· Private foundation
The Pfeifer Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
96% of The Pfeifer Family Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 5 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year The Pfeifer Family Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 13 organizations, $68k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k14 grants · $48k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SCHWAB CHARITABLE FUND | $10,000 |
| GLOBAL VILLAGE CONNECT | $10,000 |
| EARTH JUSTICE | $5,000 |
| MATH ACTION | $5,000 |
| FII NATIONAL | $5,000 |
| HOMEBOY INDUSTRIESORG | $5,000 |
| NRDC | $5,000 |
| EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE | $5,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL PEACE INITIATIVE | $3,000 |
| PETEN HEALTH | $3,000 |
| WAWC HEALTH CARE | $3,000 |
| BARAKA GIRLS | $3,000 |
| MARIN FOOD BANK | $2,000 |
| ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK | $2,000 |
| REDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK | $2,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $120k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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.
16 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC6× · 2020–2025 · $100k · revenue +26%
EARTHJUSTICE6× · 2020–2025 · $60k · revenue +16%- GVGLOBAL VILLAGE CONNECT4× · 2021–2024 · $40k · revenue +49%
Funded once
- OSOHIO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $250k · revenue +36%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $50k
- UOU OF A SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $25k
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.
To nourish the world's hungry through uniting and advancing food banks.
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.
Food Rescue - The Organization rescues excess fresh food from Bay Area businesses, schools and non-profits and immediately delivers the food to safety net partners - such as senior housing centers, after-school programs, and homeless…
The mission of the global alliance for improved nutrition (gain) is to improve the consumption of healthier diets for all, especially the most vulnerable, by improving the availability, affordability, desirability, and sustainability of…
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
The open markets institute works to help people relearn how to use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.
California Donor Table anchors a hub of donors, foundations, and community leaders. We pool together our resources to shape California into a truly democratic state that works for the people, not the powerful. Rooted in our commitment to…
RA works at the intersection of business, agriculture & forests to improve lives & protect nature by transforming how land is used, production of goods & consumer choices.
A Well-Fed World is a plant-based hunger relief and climate advocacy organization. We nourish people in need strengthen global food security and promote plant-based feeding and farming solutions that uplift marginalized communities and…
United Food Bank unites communities to alleviate hunger.
Rainforest Action Network (RAN) works toward a world where the rights and dignity of all communities are respected and where healthy forests, a stable climate and wild biodiversity are protected and celebrated.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fii - National and the most unlike its peers is International Peace Initiatives. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 31 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 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 35 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 DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds FII - NATIONAL ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds MATHACTION ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL VILLAGE CONNECT ↗
- Who funds Oakland Community Land Trust ↗
- Who funds PETEN HEALTH ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL PEACE INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds Abortion Fund of Ohio ↗
- Who funds RELIGIOUS COALITION FOR REPRODUCTIVE CHOICE ↗
- Who funds National Women's Health Network ↗
- Who funds No One Left Behind ↗
- Who funds Alameda Emergency Food DBA Alameda Food Bank ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds ALAMEDA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds THE ROTARY FOUNDATION OF ROTARY INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds TRI-COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN MACULAR DEGENERATION GOEHRING ↗
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: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Pfeifer 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 The Pfeifer Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Pfeifer 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.