· Private foundation
The Waits Brennan 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 $10k14 grants · $22k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $110k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| REDWOOD FOOD BANK | $40,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE OF SANTA ROSA | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| NAMI | $20,000 |
| PACIFIC ZEN CENTER | $9,000 |
| REDWOOD GOSPEL MISSION | $7,000 |
| FOOD FOR THOUGHT | $1,200 |
| NRDC | $1,000 |
| ACTORS GANG | $500 |
| SERA JEY FOUNDATION | $500 |
| BREAD & ROSES | $500 |
| ST VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY | $500 |
| SILVERLAKE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $400 |
| EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD PROJECT | $300 |
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 (FY18–24, $31k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 +134% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 11 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, 44% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $74k 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
- REREDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK3× · 2019–2021 · $90k · revenue +80%
- NSNAMI Sonoma County2× · 2018–2019 · $40k · revenue +35%
- NNNAMI National4× · 2018–2021 · $17k · revenue +461%
Funded once
- SDSTVINCENT DE PAUL SONOMAone grant, 2018 · $5k
- PPEACETOWNone grant, 2023 · $2k · revenue +12%
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL OF THE USA INCone grant, 2021 · $1k · revenue -5%
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.
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…
To ensure coast redwood forests in the santa cruz mountains thrive for generations to come. since 1900, sempervirens has protected more than 36,000 acres. learn more about our mission, vision, and strategic plan through 2030 at:…
The Chile-California Council is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to developing and promoting joint endeavors and cooperative relations between Chile and California, as well as individuals, legal entities and other institutions in…
The Sierra Fund (TSF) is a non-profit organization with a mission to restore ecosystem and community resiliency in the Sierra Nevada.
The mission of the California Farmland Trust is to help farmers protect the best farmland in the world.
Nature collective's mission is to drive a passion for nature for all. we think inclusively and diversely when serving those devoid of nature those who remember nature and want to connect back to it and those who have an affinity with…
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.
The Mission of Sonoma Ecology Center is to work with our community to enhance and sustain ecological health in the Sonoma valley.
At Yosemite Rivers Alliance, we unite conservation and community to protect and restore the three rivers that ?ow through the Yosemite Regionthe Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Merced.
The resource renewal institute facilitates the creation, development and implementation of practical strategies to solve the entire complex environmental problem by addressing it comprehensively.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Sonoma Land Trust and the most unlike its peers is Sera Jey Foundation. 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 41 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
31 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. 31 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 Catholic Charities San Bernardino & Riverside Counties ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD EMPIRE FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds NAMI Sonoma County ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF SANTA ROSA ↗
- Who funds NAMI National ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD GOSPEL MISSIONS ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE CERES COMMUNITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR THOUGHT ↗
- Who funds PEACETOWN ↗
- Who funds AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL OF THE USA INC ↗
- Who funds TOMALES TOWN HALL ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Edible Schoolyard Project dba The Alice Waters Institute ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SUPPORT NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds ACTOR'S GANG INC ↗
- Who funds SERA JEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BRING ON THE MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds CROSSING THE JORDAN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BREAD & ROSES PRESENTS ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS 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: Sonoma County Community Foundation · McNabb Foundation · Sonoma County Vintners Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Waits Brennan 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 Waits Brennan Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Waits Brennan 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.