· Private foundation
The Todd and Doris Ahlsten Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k6 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $487k
- $50k–250k17 grants · $1.8M
- $250k+2 grants · $787k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Global Strategies | $500,000 |
| The Ahlsten Foundation Scholarship | $287,006 |
| Path Ministries International | $185,000 |
| First Place for Youth | $150,000 |
| Feeding Nations through Education | $150,000 |
| Legal Assistance for Seniors | $125,000 |
| Massachusetts General Hospital | $125,000 |
| Shepherd's Gate | $110,000 |
| First Responders Childrens Foundati | $100,000 |
| Many Hopes | $100,000 |
| Students Rising Above | $100,000 |
| Matthew 25 Ministries | $100,000 |
| V Foundation for Cancer Research | $100,000 |
| Children Rising | $100,000 |
| Direct Relief | $75,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $286k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 92% 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 +27% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
69 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2024, 40 since wound down; 10 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; $524k 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
- GSGlobal Strategies7× · 2018–2024 · $1.9M · revenue +20% · 63% of their budget
- CRCHILDREN RISING INC5× · 2020–2024 · $460k · revenue +23%
- TVTHE V FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $415k · revenue +111%
Funded once
- PAPROJECT AVARY INC ALTERNATIVE VENTURES FOR AT RISK YOUTHgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $30k · revenue +65%
- FPFirst Presbyterian Church of Berkelone grant, 2017 · $25k
- UBUC Berkeleyone grant, 2020 · $22k
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.
Mission statement: mission: caring for our patients first and our people always. vision: to be the most comprehensive, integrated and connected health system for getting and staying well. values: excellence - we deliver high-quality,…
Just safe's mission is to educate the public about the needs of communities most impacted by crime, violence, and incarceration; and promote new safety solutions through community-building, leadership development, grassroots mobilization,…
Susan g. komen 's mission is to save lives by meeting the most critical needs in our communities & investing in breakthrough research to prevent & cure breast cancer.
City of Hope's mission is to make hope a reality for all touched by cancer and diabetes. PLEASE SEE SCHEDULE O FOR A CONTINUATION OF OUR MISSION
MISSION STATEMENT: MISSION: CARING FOR OUR PATIENTS FIRST AND OUR PEOPLE ALWAYS. VISION: TO BE THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE, INTEGRATED AND CONNECTED HEALTH SYSTEM FOR GETTING AND STAYING WELL. VALUES: EXCELLENCE - We deliver high-quality,…
Food forward fights hunger and prevents food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce, connecting this abundance with people experiencing food insecurity, and inspiring others to do the same.
Enterprise for youth empowers under-resourced san francisco youths to reach their potential through transformative paid internship experiences supported by a community of employers, caring adults, and peers.
Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. STEM Advantage mentors, prepares, and inspires first-generation, low-income, and underserved college students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). We level…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
The mission of dfci is to provide expert, compassionate, and equitable care to children, adults, and their families, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. we train new…
The anti-recidivism coalition (arc) works to end mass incarceration in california. to ensure our communities are safe, healthy, and whole, arc empowers formerly and currently incarcerated people to thrive by providing a support network,…
By advocating for quality early care and education, empowering families with information and financial support, and building the capabilities of educators, Children's Council of San Francisco ensures that every child in San Francisco has…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bay Area Rescue Mission and the most unlike its peers is American Diabetes Association. 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 31 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) — 3% 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.
80 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. 80 of the 146 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 Global Strategies ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN RISING INC ↗
- Who funds THE V FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR STUDENTS RISING ABOVE ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds National Law Enforcement and Firefighters Childrens Foundation ↗
- Who funds Feeding Nations Through Education ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY JUNCTION INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL ASSISTANCE FOR SENIORS ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Matthew 25 Ministries Inc ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds Shepherds Gate ↗
- Who funds PATH International ↗
- Who funds WATER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FIRST PLACE FOR YOUTH ↗
- Who funds WORLD RESOURCES GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds East Oakland Youth Development Center ↗
- Who funds CANAL ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MANY HOPES INC ↗
- Who funds SOAR For Youth ↗
- Who funds WORLD VISION INC ↗
- Who funds THE CERES COMMUNITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Future Talent of Silicon Valley ↗
- Who funds LOTUS BLOOM ↗
- Who funds ASIAN PACIFIC FUND ↗
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 San Francisco Foundation · Lowell Berry Foundation · East Bay Community Foundation · Bernard E & Alba Witkin Charitable Foundation · Dean and Margaret Lesher Foundation · The James Irvine Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · Heffernan Group Foundation · Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula Marin & Sonoma · Marin Community Foundation · McNabb Foundation
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 Todd and Doris Ahlsten 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.
- President and Fellows of Middlebury College — 1% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project 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 Todd and Doris Ahlsten Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Todd and Doris Ahlsten 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.