· Private foundation
The Sanford 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k21 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ProMusica Foundation | $20,000 |
| Oregon Contemporary Theater | $5,000 |
| Center For NonProfit Law | $4,800 |
| Orchestra Next | $3,000 |
| Eugene Southtowne Rotary Foundation | $2,500 |
| Food for Lane County | $2,000 |
| KLCC | $1,500 |
| Oregon Public Broadcasting | $1,500 |
| International Womens Forum of Idaho | $1,020 |
| Public Citizen | $1,000 |
| The Alliance of Idaho | $1,000 |
| Whitman College Alumni Fund | $1,000 |
| Mercer Island Rotary Foundation | $830 |
| Stove Team International | $500 |
| Casita Copan | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY20–25, $56k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +33% since the first grant, against -5% for the ones you funded once.
49 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 34 since wound down; 6 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
STOVETEAM INTERNATIONAL6× · 2020–2025 · $51k · revenue +236%
SQUAREONE VILLAGES6× · 2020–2025 · $21k · revenue +35%
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC6× · 2020–2025 · $20k · revenue +21%
Funded once
- MVMISSION VIDA NUEVAone grant, 2021 · $5k
EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVEone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue -63%- NHNightingale Hostel Sheltersone grant, 2020 · $2k
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.
Rogue Climate's mission is to empower Southern Oregon communities most impacted by climate change including low-income, rural, youth, seniors & communities of color, to win climate justice by organizing for clean energy, sustainable jobs &…
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
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…
Western rivers conservancy's mission is to protect outstanding river ecosystems in the western united states. continued on schedule o.we acquire land to conserve critical habitat, provide public access for compatible use and enjoyment, and…
Oregon agricultural trust partners with farmers and ranchers to protect agricultural lands for the benefit of oregons economy, communities, and landscapes.
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…
To offer the dignity of fair employment to people living in impoverished communities, who become transformational agents of global forest restoration.
International Rivers protects rivers and defends the rights of communities that depend on them.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
To cultivate leaders and community partnerships to advance environmental justice.
Environment next supports individuals, nonprofits and businesses around the world on solutions to complex climate issues. we provide leadership, outreach and communication support, grants, and investments to empower leaders and their ideas…
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Eugene Mission Inc and the most unlike its peers is Idaho Rivers United. 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 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 18% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
54 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. 54 of the 98 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 STOVETEAM INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds SQUAREONE VILLAGES ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds OREGON CONTEMPORARY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL LAW ALLIANCE WORLDWIDE ↗
- Who funds EUGENE SOUTHTOWNE ROTARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds ORCHESTRA NEXT ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE OF IDAHO INC ↗
- Who funds THE VOICES PROJECT USA INC ↗
- Who funds CASITA COPAN INC ↗
- Who funds OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING ↗
- Who funds EUGENE MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds THE SURFRIDER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WHITE BIRD CLINIC ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR LANE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds DENTAL CARE FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds EL PORVENIR ↗
- Who funds EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds Ugandan Water Project ↗
- Who funds AL OTRO LADO ↗
- Who funds McKenzie River Trust ↗
- Who funds SUN VALLEY SUMMER SYMPHONY INC ↗
- Who funds Nextstep Recycling ↗
- Who funds NIGHTINGALE HOSTED SHELTERS ↗
- Who funds Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation ↗
- Who funds BLAINE COUNTY HUNGER COALITION 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 Oregon Community Foundation · United Way of Lane County · First Fruits Foundation · Chambers Family Foundation · The Autzen Foundation · Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust · Crow Farm Foundation · Larson Family Foundation · The Suwinski Family Foundation Inc · McKay Family Foundation · The Woodard Family Foundation · M J Murdock Charitable Trust
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 Sanford 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Salem for Refugees — 35% of income from government
- White Bird Clinic — 29% of income from government
- Sponsors Inc — 8% of income from government
- McKenzie River Trust — 8% of income from government
- Orchestra Next — 5% of income from government
- Food for Lane County — 5% of income from government
- Oregon Contemporary Theatre — 5% of income from government
- Squareone Villages — 2% of income from government
- Eugene Symphony Association Inc — 2% of income from government
- Oregon Public Broadcasting — 1% of income from government
- In a Landscape — 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 Sanford Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Sanford 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.