· Private foundation
The Unicorn 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 $10k1 grant · $500
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RANCHO COASTAL HUMANE SOCIETY | $60,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR TIBET | $10,000 |
| PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM | $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 (FY21–21, $150) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
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 +46% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $500 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
- TSTHE SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION8× · 2017–2024 · $290k · revenue +38%
- RCRANCHO COASTAL HUMANE SOCIETY8× · 2017–2025 · $180k · revenue +141%
- ICINTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR TIBET8× · 2017–2025 · $113k · revenue +73%
Funded once
- OGOLD GLOBE THEATREgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +38%
- ACACTBLUE CHARITIES INCone grant, 2018 · $2k · revenue -99%
- LPLAS PATRONASgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $1k · revenue +26%
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.
See schedule 0founded in 1994, opera santa barbara is the signature provider of professional opera on the california central coast. we aspire to be a cultural leader in the santa barbara region, voicing and advancing our community's spirit…
Mission: the mission of san diego opera is to deliver exceptional performances and exciting, accessible programs to diverse audiences, focusing on community partnerships, and the transformative and expressive power of the human voice. as…
To distribute public affairs and other educational information in order to create an electronic bridge between californians and their public officials, and, in the process educate a new generation of voting citizens and civic leaders who…
Santa barbara humane operates two campuses located in santa barbara and santa maria providing care for community-owned and homeless animals. both campuses offer affordable high quality veterinary care, compassionate behavior training…
On a mission to connect every person facing hunger with nutritious meals by maximizing food rescue. through direct service and community partnerships, feeding san diego provides more than 26 million meals each year to children, families,…
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
Marin humane transforms lives through exceptional animal care, humane education, and advocacy. every day, marin humane inspires compassion and positive relationships between people and animals.
The museum of contemporary art san diego invites all audiences to experience our world, our region, and ourselves through the prism of contemporary art.
The Television Academy is dedicated to celebrating excellence, innovation and the advancement of the telecommunications arts and sciences through recognition, education and leadership, while fostering a diverse, inclusive and accessible…
San diego zoo wildlife alliance is committed to saving species worldwide by uniting our expertise in wildlife care and conservation science with our dedication to inspiring passion for nature.
California association of food banks (cafb) is a non-profit public benefit corporation located in oakland, california. together with its 41-member foodbanks, cafb is the largest charitable hunger-relief and anti-hunger leader in the state.…
In addition to rescue and adoption, pet orphans provides a wide range of services including education, medical/financial, spay/neuter, and training assistance.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank and the most unlike its peers is Humane World for Animals Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 22 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 THE SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds RANCHO COASTAL HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR TIBET ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds OLD GLOBE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds ACTBLUE CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds JACOBS & CUSHMAN SAN DIEGO FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds LAS PATRONAS ↗
- Who funds FOOD IN NEED OF DISTRIBUTION INC ↗
- Who funds EMPOWERING LIVES INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds Albertine Foundation ↗
- Who funds Maltese and More Rescue Inc ↗
- Who funds NETWORK FOR GOOD ↗
- Who funds PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Museum of Broadcast Communications ↗
- Who funds COACHELLA VALLEY RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds ST GERMAINE CHILDREN'S CHARITY ↗
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: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Unicorn 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.
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 Unicorn Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Unicorn 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.