· Private foundation
The Schmidt Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k14 grants · $56k
- $10k–50k81 grants · $2.0M
- $50k–250k396 grants · $48M
- $250k+204 grants · $136M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM FOUNDATION | $8,000,000 |
| HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC | $6,665,000 |
| SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION | $3,537,500 |
| ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC | $3,400,000 |
| REALIZE IMPACT | $3,200,000 |
| SOGOREA TE LAND TRUST | $3,175,000 |
| KQED INC | $3,000,000 |
| RSF SOCIAL FINANCE | $2,679,117 |
| GRIST MAGAZINE INC | $2,513,000 |
| MYRIAD USA | $2,447,786 |
| JUSTICE OUTSIDE | $2,090,000 |
| REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE FOUNDATION | $2,050,000 |
| CONSERVATION X LABS INC | $2,000,000 |
| APPAREL IMPACT INSTITUTE | $2,000,000 |
| CALIFORNIA FARMLINK | $1,920,700 |
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 (FY19–24, $10.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 60% 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 6% of The Schmidt Family 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 +43% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
607 repeat relationships — 458 still active in FY2024, 149 since wound down; 207 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $31M 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
- SMSUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION6× · 2019–2024 · $24M · revenue +170%
MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM FOUNDATION6× · 2019–2024 · $23M · revenue +71%- CCCLIMATE CENTRAL INC5× · 2019–2023 · $13M · revenue +161% · 37% of their budget
Funded once
- GGOFUNDMEORGgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $1.5M · revenue +26%
PARTNERS IN HEALTH A NONPROFIT CORPORATIONone grant, 2022 · $700k · revenue -14%- FFFRESNO FOOD COMMONS TRUSTone grant, 2019 · $700k · revenue 0% · 76% of their budget
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.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
To research and develop healthy climate solutions comprising global food security, ecosystem regeneration and carbon balance in seas and soils.
To empower frontline communities to lead nature-based solutions that advance climate justice, ecosystem restoration, and resilient livelihoods through connecting locally-led initiatives to funding, markets, and technical support.
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.
Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) uses data-driven advocacy and litigation to fight for forests, communities and the climate.
Taproot Earth works with communities to support strategies around the use of water, energy and land.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
E3g is a leading international not-for-profit think tank specialising in climate diplomacy harnessing expertise in the politics and economics of climate change.
Global Forest Generation restores and protects forest ecosystems in partnership with grassroots leaders and local communities across vast landscapes which play a critical role in preserving water, protecting biodiversity, storing carbon,…
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…
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (See) Inc and the most unlike its peers is Schmidt Ocean Institute. 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 19 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) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
904 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. 904 of the 1,121 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 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Grist Magazine Inc ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE CENTRAL INC ↗
- Who funds RSF SOCIAL FINANCE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR OPEN SOCIETY INT'L INC ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION X LABS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER PHILANTHROPY ADVISORS INC ↗
- Who funds APPAREL IMPACT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD & WATER WATCH ↗
- Who funds GREENPEACE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA FARMLINK ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES FOR A BETTER ENVIRONMENT ↗
- Who funds FIRST NATIONS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SOGOREA TE LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Community Foundation for Nantucket Inc ↗
- Who funds MOVEMENT STRATEGY CENTER ↗
- Who funds Realize Impact ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Columbia Riverkeeper ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds CENTER ON RACE POVERTY & THE ENVIRONMENT ↗
- Who funds The Center for Investigative Reporting formrly Foundation for National Progress ↗
- Who funds MULTIPLIER ↗
- Who funds PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ↗
- Who funds Sustainable Economies Law Center ↗
- Who funds PHYSICIANS SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS FOR SUSTAINABLE AND HEALTHY ENERGY INC ↗
- Who funds Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds GUARDIANORG FOUNDATION ↗
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: Windward Fund · Resources Legacy Fund · Patagoniaorg · United States Energy Foundation · Common Counsel Foundation · Movement Strategy Center · Rsf Social Finance Inc · Rockefeller Family Fund Inc · Natural Resources Defense Council Inc · Sustainable Markets Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Solutions Project Inc
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 Schmidt 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.
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — 63% of income from government
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Community Foundation for Nantucket Inc — 10% of income from government
- Rogue Climate — 7% of income from government
- Northeastern University — 7% of income from government
- Verde Inc — 3% of income from government
- Columbia Riverkeeper — 1% of income from government
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 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 Schmidt Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Schmidt 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.