· Private foundation
The Small Change Foundation
Its FY2023 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k2 grants · $833
- $10k–50k1 grant · $11k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION HALLELUJAH FUND | $11,228 |
| THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION HALLELUJAH FUND | $651 |
| THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION HALLELUJAH FUND | $182 |
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 (FY17–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 20% of your 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 +94% since the first grant, against +36% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2023, 28 since wound down.
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 FY2023, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
TREVOR PROJECT INC5× · 2017–2021 · $180k · revenue +802%- EFEQUALITY FEDERATION INSTITUTE5× · 2017–2021 · $110k · revenue +164%
- OIOUTRIGHT INTERNATIONAL4× · 2018–2021 · $100k · revenue +608%
Funded once
- ULUCLA Law SchoolThe Williams Instituone grant, 2017 · $85k
- NCNational Center for Transgender Equone grant, 2017 · $70k
- USUCLA SCHOOL OF LAW THE WILLIAMS INSTITUTEone grant, 2020 · $60k
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.
To provide leadership and professional development, education and research to create workplaces free from discrimination.
Global Philanthropy Project (GPP or the Organization) is a collaboration of funders and philanthropic advisors working to expand global philanthropic support to advance the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex…
Advocates for trans equality fights for the legal and political rights of transgender people in america. leveraging decades of experience on the frontlines of power, we shift government and society towards a future where we are no less…
Founded forty years ago, glaad is the world's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer ("lgbtq") media advocacy organization promoting and ensuring fair, accurate, and inclusive representation of people and issues across all…
National lgbtq task force action fund, founded in 1974 as the national gay and lesbian task force, inc., works to build the grassroots political power of the lgbt community to win complete equality. we do this through direct and grassroots…
Gender Justice League's mission is to empower all people to eliminate discrimination and prejudice based on sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation in Washington State, and to ensure that trans and gender diverse…
Connecting people, resources, and opportunities, so together we can build a strong and healthy lgbt community, and a more welcoming and equitable world
To create a world that is healthy, just and fully equal for all lgbtq+ people.
The organization pursues educational, lobbying, and poltical activities in order to further lesbain, gay, bisexual, and transgender (lgbt) interests within utah.
LGBTQ Victory Institute works to achieve and sustain equality through leadership development, trainings, research and convenings. We work around the globe to increase the number, expand the diversity, and ensure the success of out LGBTQ+…
Immigration equality promotes justice and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and hiv-positive immigrants through direct legal services, policy advocacy, and impact litigation.
Nlgbtq+ bar association's purpose is to promote justice in and through the legal profession for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community (referred to collectively as the community) and its allies, and to provide a means to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Equality Federation Institute and the most unlike its peers is Golden Bridges School. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 29 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% 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 12% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 56 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 Palm Center ↗
- Who funds TREVOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds EQUALITY FEDERATION INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds OUTRIGHT INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds Transgender Law Center ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATES FOR YOUTH ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds SERVICES AND ADVOCACY FOR GAY LESBIAN BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER ELDERS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTERLINK INC ↗
- Who funds TRUE COLORS UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATES FOR TRANS EQUALITY EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN BRIDGES SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SWARTHMORE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds SOULFORCE INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL SERVICES FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY MUSIC CENTER ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK LIVE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CENTER FOR LGBTQ RIGHTS FKA NATIONAL CENTER FOR LESBIAN RIGHTS ↗
- Who funds Tectonic Theater Project Inc ↗
- Who funds GLIDE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Albany Park Theater Project ↗
- Who funds THE ADVERTISING COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds New Conservatory Theatre Center ↗
- Who funds The Working Group ↗
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: Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · The San Francisco Foundation · The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation · Arcus Foundation · Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · East Bay Community Foundation · Tides Foundation · The Ford Foundation · Gill Foundation · Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr Fund · Borealis Philanthropy
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 Small Change 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.
- Centerlink Inc — 12% 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 Small Change Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Small Change 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.