· Community foundation
The San Diego Foundation
THE SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
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 1,158 grants below total $94,296,130 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $98,736,561 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $4,440,431 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 $10k176 grants · $1.3M
- $10k–50k595 grants · $12M
- $50k–250k325 grants · $35M
- $250k+62 grants · $45M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR MONTEREY COUNTY | $4,956,124 |
| UC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION | $3,739,925 |
| POLICY & INNOVATION CENTER | $2,195,000 |
| JUST TRANSITION ALLIANCE | $1,912,356 |
| CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH & WILDLIFE | $1,500,000 |
| WTA FOUNDATION INC | $1,500,000 |
| UC SAN DIEGO | $1,492,102 |
| CAMPANILE FOUNDATION | $1,358,614 |
| SAN DIEGO COMMUNITY COLLEGE AUXILIARY ORGANIZATION | $1,205,000 |
| ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO | $1,197,224 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO | $1,121,645 |
| LAZARIAN WORLD HOMES | $974,388 |
| LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION | $961,666 |
| FOREVER BALBOA PARK | $958,341 |
| SAN DIEGO HABITAT CONSERVANCY | $929,175 |
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 (FY17–25, $86.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% 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.
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 San Diego 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 +37% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
1357 repeat relationships — 827 still active in FY2025, 530 since wound down; 132 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9.7M 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
- USUC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $43M · revenue +78%
- YOYMCA OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY9× · 2017–2025 · $28M · revenue +103%
- CDChild Development Associates Inc2× · 2020–2021 · $17M · revenue +166%
Funded once
- PFPADRES FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $1.5M · revenue +106% · 70% of their budget
SIERRA HEALTH FOUNDATION CENTER FOR HEALTH PROGRAM MANAGEMENTone grant, 2022 · $1.2M · revenue +4%- EVEAST VALLEY CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP OFone grant, 2018 · $800k
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.
Promote Access to Health Care For All San Diegans
the organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the UCSF Foundation.
Promotion, awareness and support in the field of chemistry
Scripps College ("Scripps") is an independent, liberal arts, undergraduate college for women.
To raise and manage private funds to support uci's broader mission of excellence in teaching, research and public service.
To promote community investment in public education to ensure equity and access to an innovative, world-class education that inspires confidence, competence, and creativity in every student in the Santa Barbara Unified School District.
Pasadena bio collaborative incubator is a nonprofit organization focused on economic development and job creation in southern california. we encourage the growth of an innovative biotechnology industry by providing educational/training…
The Labor Council offers an avenue for local unions to come together as one group.
The SDBRI mission is to find new ways to predict and prevent cancer, diabetes, autoimmune disease, neurological disorders and HIV infection, and to accelerate medical advances that maintain health and improve quality of life.
California Competes: Higher Education for a Strong Economy is a nonpartisan policy and research organization focused on identifying solutions to the states most critical challenges at the intersection of higher education, equity, and the…
The California Water Data Consortium is an independent, nonprofit organization created by a partnership of state agencies and others to ensure that Californians have access to the best possible water and ecological information to make…
To provide student scholarships, increase student success, and support of academic programs.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Diego Seniors Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Uss Midway Museum. 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 28 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) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
1729 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. 1729 of the 2,000 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 UC SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Child Development Associates Inc ↗
- Who funds The Salk Institute for Biological Studies ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds THE CAMPANILE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds THE SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Sharp Healthcare Foundation ↗
- Who funds SCRIPPS HEALTH ↗
- Who funds San Diego Community College Auxiliary Organization ↗
- Who funds THE PLANETARY SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION SDSU RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR MONTEREY COUNTY ↗
- Who funds POLICY & INNOVATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO HABITAT CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds REUBEN H FLEET SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds Lazarian World Homes Inc ↗
- Who funds Interfaith Community Services Inc ↗
- Who funds MISSION EDGE SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds SBCS CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds United Women of East Africa Support Team ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds County of San Diego Black Chamber of Commerce Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds Inland Empire Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds CHICANO FEDERATION OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds VISTA HILL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST VINCENT DE PAUL VILLAGE 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: The Conrad Prebys Foundation · The Parker Foundation · Price Philanthropies Foundation · The Cushman Foundation · David C Copley Foundation · Walter J & Betty C Zable Foundation · Rancho Santa Fe Foundation · Alliance Healthcare Foundation · Samuel I & John Henry Fox Foundation · Pratt Memorial Fund · French Fund Samuel Katherine Tua · Boys and Girls Aid Society of San Diego Ltd
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 San Diego 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.
- Springfield Museums Corporation — 5% 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.