· Private foundation
The Roberts 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.
The 65 grants below total $21,717,950 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $45,741,340 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $24,023,390 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 · FY2023
- Under $10k29 grants · $58k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $415k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $975k
- $250k+9 grants · $20M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Claremont McKenna College (The Roberts Plan) - Pledge | $10,000,000 |
| REDF Strategic Growth Campaign - Pledge | $5,000,000 |
| Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula | $1,920,000 |
| The Joy Culture Foundation | $1,000,000 |
| Environmental Now/Inc. Network | $600,000 |
| San Francisco Symphony (Annual Fund) | $500,000 |
| Memphis Brooks Museum of Art | $500,000 |
| Boys and Girls Club of the Big Island (Hawaii) | $400,000 |
| China/Hualalai Community Economic Development Corporat | $350,000 |
| Monterey Peninsula Foundation | $200,000 |
| NB3 Foundation | $200,000 |
| REDF - The Carls Javits Award | $150,000 |
| African American Community Services Agency | $100,000 |
| Los Angeles Opera Company | $100,000 |
| UCSF Foundation (Cardiovascular Research Institute) | $75,000 |
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 (FY17–18, $310k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 62% 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 +70% since the first grant, against +30% for the ones you funded once.
53 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2023, 36 since wound down; 47 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 41% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $13M 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
- CMClaremont McKenna College3× · 2017–2022 · $34M · revenue +89%
- RREDF3× · 2017–2022 · $11M · revenue +89% · 48% of their budget
Culver Educational Foundation2× · 2017–2018 · $8.0M · revenue +73%
Funded once
- RTREDF - The Carla Javits Awardone grant, 2022 · $5.0M
- CMClaremont McKenna College (Roberts Pavilion) - Pledgeone grant, 2021 · $4.9M
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATEDgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $2.5M · revenue +202%
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 mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
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 mission of the uc davis foundation is to secure, steward and manage private gifts for uc davis.
Golden gate university prepares individuals to lead and serve by providing high quality, practice-based educational programs in law, taxation, business and related professions - as a nonprofit institution - in an innovative and challenging…
The central mission of the university of southern california is the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit. the principal means by which our mission is…
Undergraduate, graduate, and professional education and research across a broad array of academic domains.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
At san francisco friends school, students learn in a community grounded in the quaker values of reflection, integrity, peaceful problem-solving and stewardship. our teachers challenge students with a dynamic curriculum that inspires…
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 University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
A diverse and sustainable learning community dedicated to discovery and excellence in teaching, scholarship and practice, pacific university inspires students to think, care, create and pursue justice in our world.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Basic Fund and the most unlike its peers is Del Monte Forest Conservancy. 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 31 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
111 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. 111 of the 234 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 Claremont McKenna College ↗
- Who funds REDF ↗
- Who funds Culver Educational Foundation ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds NEW LEADERS INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE PENINSULA ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ↗
- Who funds YEAR UP INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD MIND INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds THE JOY CULTURE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds DUNN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds KIPP BAY AREA SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF THE BAY AREA ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF THE BIG ISLAND ↗
- Who funds Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Inc ↗
- Who funds PENINSULA OPEN SPACE TRUST ↗
- Who funds ENTITLEMENTS HOW INC ↗
- Who funds QUEEN'S NORTH HAWAII COMMUNITY HOSPITAL ↗
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: Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Marin Community Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · The Zierk Family Foundation · Penner Family Foundation Inc · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Courtney Roberts and Steve Preston Family Foundation · The Hoak Foundation · Pga Tour Inc · The Eric and Lulu Roberts Family 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 Roberts 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.
- Year Up Inc — 0% 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 Roberts Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Roberts 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.