· Private foundation
The Shelby and Frederick Gans 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 $10k5 grants · $25k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $259k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $776k
- $250k+1 grant · $600k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SAN FRANCISCO BALLET | $600,000 |
| EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD PROJECT | $200,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS OF SAN FRANCISCO | $100,900 |
| MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP | $100,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY BERKELEY FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO SPCA | $50,500 |
| UC REGENTS | $50,000 |
| SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE COOPER HEWITT DESIGN MUSEUM | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY BANCROFT LIBRARY | $50,000 |
| CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART | $50,000 |
| CROWDEN MUSIC CENTER | $50,000 |
| CONGREGATION EMANU-EL | $30,000 |
| ALONZO KING LINES BALLET | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| PBS FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
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 (FY24–24, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +30% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 4 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
- SFSAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION7× · 2017–2025 · $941k · revenue +37%
- TEThe Edible Schoolyard Project dba The Alice Waters Institute7× · 2018–2025 · $722k · revenue +189%
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION8× · 2018–2025 · $711k · revenue +33%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $150k
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue -21%- CBCRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUMone grant, 2019 · $50k
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 san francisco jazz organization (the organization) is a recognized international leader in jazz creation, presentation, and education. the organization explores the full spectrum of jazz, from the music's origins in the african…
Nurture empathy and connection by engaging communities with socially relevant contemporary art
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The philadelphia museum of art - in partnership with the city, the region, and art museums around the globe - seeks to preserve, enhance, interpret, and extend the reach of its great collection in particular, and the visual arts in…
We believe opera is a uniquely compelling, entertaining and emotionally thrilling art form. our mission is to bring together growing audiences to experience opera's transformative power.
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
Munson-williams-proctor arts institute (mwpai) is a fine arts center dedicated to serving diverse audiences by advancing the appreciation, understanding, and enjoyment of the arts. the art institute aims to promote interest and…
Manhattan school of music is deeply committed to excellence in education, performance, and creative activity; to the humanity of the school's environment; and to the cultural enrichment of the larger community. a premiere international…
The contemporary jewish museum (the cjm) makes the diversity of the jewish experience relevant for a twenty-first-century audience through innovative exhibitions and programs that educate, challenge, and inspire.
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The American Federation of Arts Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Edible Schoolyard Project dba the Alice Waters 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 39 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 63 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 SAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds The Edible Schoolyard Project dba The Alice Waters Institute ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds DISCALCED INC ↗
- Who funds Crystal Bridges-Museum of American Art Inc ↗
- Who funds The Crowden Music Center ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF SAN FRANCISCO INC ↗
- Who funds ALONZO KING LINES BALLET ↗
- Who funds THE ASPEN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds EXPERIENCE CAMPS ↗
- Who funds PBS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds THE SAN FRANCISCO SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds CORPORATION OF THE FINE ARTS MUSEUMS ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Charlie Cart Project ↗
- Who funds THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE PHILHARMONIC SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NY 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 Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Impactassetsinc · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Shelby and Frederick Gans 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.
- From the Top Inc — 6% of income from government
- 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 Shelby and Frederick Gans Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Shelby and Frederick Gans 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.