How much does The Wenger Family Foundation give?

The Wenger Family Foundation reported 17 grants totaling $824,762 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 22 and 28 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does The Wenger Family Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Philanthropy (71%), Health (7%), Arts & Culture (5%).

Who are The Wenger Family Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Kidsave International Inc ($39k), Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History ($25k), Women's Fund of Santa Barbara ($18k).

Does The Wenger Family Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 18% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The Wenger Family Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as The Wenger Family Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Santa Barbara Foundation, Greater Washington Community Foundation, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation.

Where is The Wenger Family Foundation based?

The Wenger Family Foundation is based in CA.

The Wenger Family Foundation

The Wenger Family Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

The Wenger Family Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$825k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$782k

Largest

01What it funds

0199% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Philanthropy$809kHealth$83kArts & Culture$62kEnvironment$57kInternational$45kFood & Nutrition$23kEducation$17kCivil Rights$10kOther$0

02FY2025 · 17 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k16 grants · $43k
$250k+1 grant · $782k

$2,500

Median grant

States reached

$16k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
RAYMOND JAMES CHARITABLE ENDOWMENT FUND DAF	$781,818
NATIONAL MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SOCIETY	$6,000
GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND	$5,122
SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY	$5,000
KIDSAVE	$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

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its 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 its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

29%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$336k · 39 repeat orgs$806k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +55% since the first grant, against +15% for those 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

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$336k

$18k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+55%

+15%

Still filing today

64%

46%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 4% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $788k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

HealthArts & CultureEnvironmentEducationAnimalsInternationalOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

KI
KIDSAVE INTERNATIONAL INC
9× · 2017–2025 · $39k · revenue +112%
WF
WOMEN'S FUND OF SANTA BARBARA
9× · 2017–2025 · $18k · revenue +16%
SB
SANTA BARBARA BOTANIC GARDEN
9× · 2017–2025 · $16k · revenue +163%

Funded once

C
CASA
one grant, 2023 · $4k
NP
ned Parenthood of Santa Barbara
one grant, 2020 · $2k
NC
Nature Conservancy - California
one grant, 2020 · $2k

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

World Wildlife Fund Inc

Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)

Environment

Environmental Defense Center

The organization protects and enhances the local environment through education, advocacy and legal action.

Crime & Legal

Conservation International Foundation

Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.

Environment

Sempervirens Fund

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:…

Environment

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden

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,…

Environment

Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Foundation

To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.

Animals

Ocean Conservancy

Ocean conservancy unites science, people, and policy to protect our ocean, today and for generations to come.

Environment

California State Parks Foundation

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.

Recreation & Sports

The San Diego Foundation

The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.

Philanthropy

Santa Barbara Foundation

The mission of the santa barbara foundation (sbf) is to mobilize collective wisdom and philanthropic capital to build empathetic, inclusive and resilient communities.

Philanthropy

The Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Fdn Group

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.

—

National Audubon Society Inc

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).

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Washington Community Foundation; 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.

04the grantee network

42 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 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.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

41/42

Grantees still filing

31/42

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$976,824Arts & Culture$51,109International$50,488Environment$21,696Philanthropy$21,250Education$13,450Health$11,935

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Santa Barbara FoundationCA21.2× affinity8 shared granteesties to 10 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

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

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Wenger Family Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Wenger Family Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

2get no government money at all

12report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–90%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Wenger Family’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home