· Private foundation
The Robertson Powell 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.
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 · FY2025
- Under $10k12 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $60k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $90k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HYPERSOMNIA FOUNDATION | $90,450 |
| THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB - WORLD AFFAIRS OF CAL | $15,000 |
| J DAVID GLADSTONE INSTITUTES | $15,000 |
| ACLU FOUNDATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA | $10,000 |
| WOMENS FUND OF SANTA BARBARA | $10,000 |
| VITAL VOICES GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP INC | $10,000 |
| CLIMATE CHANGE FOR ALL EDUCATORS INC | $5,000 |
| THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB - WORLD AFFAIRS OF CALIFORNI | $5,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA CNTY IMMIGRANT LEGAL DEFENSE CENTER | $2,500 |
| FOODBANK OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY | $2,500 |
| KASIGAU STUDENT EDUCATION FUND | $1,250 |
| GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND | $1,200 |
| CHESAPEAKE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY | $1,000 |
| LEUKEMIA & LYMPHOMA SOCIETY INC | $500 |
| WASHINGTON DOUGLASS CHORALE | $500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% 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
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 22% of The Robertson Powell 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 +14% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 10 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, 69% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $53k 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
- HFHYPERSOMNIA FOUNDATION INC6× · 2019–2025 · $375k · revenue +249%
- WFWOMEN'S FUND OF SANTA BARBARA3× · 2023–2025 · $31k · revenue +14%
- SISTRONGMINDS INC4× · 2019–2024 · $26k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- TNTHE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB JOURNALISM INSTITUTE INCone grant, 2021 · $125k · revenue -5%
- ZAZACHARY AND ELIZABETH M FISHER CENTER FORone grant, 2019 · $5k
COOPERATIVE FOR ASSISTANCE AND RELIEF EVERYWHERE INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue +34%
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.
A nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for hiv, tuberculosis, and emerging infectious diseases.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
Public knowledge promotes freedom of expression, an open internet, and access to affordable communications tools and creative works. we work to shape policy on behalf of the public interest.
To support and empower all affected by gynecologic cancers through education, research, and public awareness.
Women donors network advances a just, equitable, and sustainable world through the power of philanthropy, women's leadership, and collective and individual action.
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
See schedule okqed serves the people of northern california with a community-supported alternative to commercial media, providing the knowledge needed to make informed decisions; convening community dialogue; bringing the arts to everyone;…
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
The fuller project is the global newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking reporting that catalyzes positive change for women.
Our mission as a global alliance is to provide strategies, research, and resources that support the critical agency and influence of women's foundations and gender justice funders in the movement for equality, justice, and power for all.
World coffee research unites the global coffee industry to drive science-based agricultural solutions to urgently secure a diverse and sustainable supply of quality coffee today and for generations to come. our mission is to grow, protect,…
To launch breakthrough climate mitigation efforts by identifying, supporting, and unleashing innovative leaders with transformative strategies.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Movement Voter Fund and the most unlike its peers is Washington Douglas Chorale. 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 20 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) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
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 33 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 HYPERSOMNIA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds POPULATION SERVICES INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB JOURNALISM INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds VITAL VOICES GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FUND OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds STRONGMINDS INC ↗
- Who funds THE J DAVID GLADSTONE INSTITUTES ↗
- Who funds THE COMMONWEALTH CLUB - WORLD AFFAIRS OF CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds ACLU FOUNDATION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Lillian's List Foundation ↗
- Who funds COOPERATIVE FOR ASSISTANCE AND RELIEF EVERYWHERE INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE CHANGE FOR ALL EDUCATORS ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara County Immigrant Legal Defense Center ↗
- Who funds MOVEMENT VOTER FUND ↗
- Who funds GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds RAINBOW RAILROAD USA INC ↗
- Who funds Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds ROCK THE VOTE ↗
- Who funds GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND ↗
- Who funds REEF RENEWAL FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds THE BATTERY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KASIGAU STUDENT EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds DEAR JACK FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Wake Up Narcolepsy Inc ↗
- Who funds PROJECT SLEEP ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON DOUGLAS CHORALE ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds KLEINE-LEVIN SYNDROME FOUNDATION INC ↗
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 Communal Fund · Impactassetsinc · American Heart Association Inc · Community Foundation of New Jersey · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Chicago Community Trust · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Network for Good · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund
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 Robertson Powell 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.
- Greater Boston Food Bank Inc — 22% of income from government
- Chesapeake Shakespeare Company — 16% 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.