· Private foundation
Thistle & Rose 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 $10k4 grants · $16k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $125k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FOODBANK OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY | $75,000 |
| CALM | $50,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF ART | $10,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA IMMIGRATION DEFENSE FUND | $5,000 |
| WOMENS FUND OF SANTA BARBARA | $5,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| AMERICAN SOCIETY OF TRANSPLANTATION | $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 (FY18–23, $36k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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 +39% since the first grant, against +33% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 2 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11k 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
- FOFoodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc3× · 2020–2025 · $175k · revenue +5%
- LFLAKE FOREST ACADEMY2× · 2023–2024 · $100k · revenue +33%
- CICALM INC4× · 2017–2025 · $90k · revenue +85%
Funded once
- SYSANTA YNEZ VALLEY FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $30k · revenue +33%
- PIPARTNERS IN HOUSING SOLUTIONS INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $25k · revenue +143%
- GWGANNA WALSKA LOTUSLANDgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +204%
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.
The san diego foundation inspires enduring philanthropy and enables community solutions to improve the quality of life in our region.
The uc santa barbara foundation actively works to further the goals of the university of california, santa barbara. the foundation seeks to maintain and nurture the university's quality and distinction. on behalf of the campus, the…
Santa Barbara Education Foundation (SBEF) provides and supports programs that enrich the academic, artistic, and personal development of all students in the Santa Barbara Unified School District.
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…
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 santa barbara zoo is dedicated to the preservation, conservation, and enhancement of the natural world and its living treasures through education, research, recreation and conservation.
The mission of st. francis foundation of santa barbara is to promote and support health care.
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
The asante foundation's primary exempt purpose is to raise monies and in-kind donations to further the exempt purpose of asante, a 501(c)(3) hospital and healthcare system which services the healthcare needs of the citizens of southern…
The organization provides professional investment management services for endowed gifts and financial assets entrusted to the ucsf foundation.
Arbor research collaborative for health is committed to improving patient care through research that shapes medical policies and practice. in particular, arbor research conducts health outcomes research on chronic disease and end-stage…
Provide cash grants and free consulting to grassroots organizations in santa barbara county.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Santa Barbara Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 33 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) — 0% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 43 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 Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds LAKE FOREST ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds CALM INC ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FUND OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds NORTH SHORE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds STORYTELLER CHILDRENS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds The Rona Barrett Foundation ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds SANTA YNEZ VALLEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS IN HOUSING SOLUTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds GANNA WALSKA LOTUSLAND ↗
- Who funds CASA DEL HERRERO ↗
- Who funds TEAM RUBICON INC ↗
- Who funds SPONDYLITIS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds Horsefeathers Therapeutic Riding NFP ↗
- Who funds ADVANCING COLLECTIVE TRANSFORMATION (FKA UFFIZI ORDER)(DBA-SBACT) ↗
- Who funds SchoolCARE ↗
- Who funds IN DEFENSE OF ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital ↗
- Who funds ORPHANS OF THE STORM ↗
- Who funds THE NORA PROJECT ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ORGANIC SOUP KITCHEN ↗
- Who funds PAW WORKS INC ↗
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 · Ann Jackson Family Foundation · Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Towbes Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Barbara N Rubin Foundation · Alice Tweed Tuohy Foundation · Latkin Charitable Foundation · June G Outhwaite Charitable Trust JS Poucher KL Englert & CM Cooney Co-Tr · G a Fowler Family Foundation · Patricia Bragg 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 Thistle & Rose 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.
- 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.