· Private foundation
The Wenger Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k16 grants · $43k
- $250k+1 grant · $782k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RAYMOND JAMES CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT FUND DAF | $781,818 |
| NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY | $6,000 |
| GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND | $5,122 |
| KIDSAVE | $5,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY | $5,000 |
| FOOD BANK SANTA BARBARA COUNTY | $2,900 |
| DIRECT RELIEF | $2,900 |
| SANTA BARBARA BOTANIC GARDEN | $2,500 |
| GRACE REPRODUCTIVE FUND | $2,500 |
| WOMEN'S FUND OF SANTA BARBARA | $2,500 |
| SANTA BARBARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | $2,472 |
| SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF ART | $1,550 |
| ROUND HOUSE THEATER | $1,500 |
| ELINGS PARK FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| GAVIOTA COAST CONSERVANCY | $1,000 |
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 (FY23–23, $500) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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 +55% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 25 since wound down; 3 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, 4% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $788k 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
- KIKIDSAVE INTERNATIONAL INC9× · 2017–2025 · $39k · revenue +112%
- WFWOMEN'S FUND OF SANTA BARBARA9× · 2017–2025 · $18k · revenue +16%
- SBSANTA BARBARA BOTANIC GARDEN9× · 2017–2025 · $16k · revenue +163%
Funded once
- CCASAone grant, 2023 · $4k
- NPned Parenthood of Santa Barbaraone grant, 2020 · $2k
- NCNature Conservancy - Californiaone grant, 2020 · $2k
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.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
The organization protects and enhances the local environment through education, advocacy and legal action.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
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:…
Rancho santa ana botanic gardens promotes botany, conservation, and horticulture to inspire, inform and educate the public and scientific community about california's native flora. the garden is devoted to the collection, cultivation,…
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
Ocean conservancy unites science, people, and policy to protect our ocean, today and for generations to come.
California state parks foundation is an independent, member-supported nonprofit dedicated to protecting and preserving the california state park system for the benefit of all.
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
The mission of the santa barbara foundation (sbf) is to mobilize collective wisdom and philanthropic capital to build empathetic, inclusive and resilient communities.
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.
We work towards a future where birds thrive across the americas because audubon is a powerful, diverse, and ever-growing force for conservation. (continued on schedule o).
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Washington Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Chasing Hope Foundation Christine Walker. 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 43 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 17% 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.
42 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. 42 of the 71 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 KIDSAVE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FUND OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA BOTANIC GARDEN ↗
- Who funds GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND ↗
- Who funds SOME INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds DIRECT RELIEF ↗
- Who funds ROUND HOUSE THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM FOR ALL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BARNARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GRACE REPRODUCTIVE FUND ↗
- Who funds Tradart Foundation ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds GAVIOTA COAST CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ELINGS PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA ZOOLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER WASHINGTON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds MARTHA'S TABLE INC ↗
- Who funds CLIMB FOR HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds DC ABORTION FUND ↗
- Who funds MONTECITO TRAILS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MCLEAN PROJECT FOR THE ARTS ↗
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: Santa Barbara Foundation · Greater Washington Community Foundation · The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation · June G Outhwaite Charitable Trust JS Poucher KL Englert & CM Cooney Co-Tr · Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Chicago Community Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · American Endowment 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 Wenger Family 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.
- Round House Theatre Inc — 5% 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.