· Private foundation
Towbes 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k37 grants · $217k
- $10k–50k54 grants · $873k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $386k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION | $170,575 |
| COMMUNITY PARTNERS FOR YOUTHWELL | $65,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA COTTAGE HOSPITAL FND | $50,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA COTTAGE HOSPITAL FND | $50,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION | $48,250 |
| SANTA BARBARA SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATIO | $40,000 |
| CHANNEL ISLANDS YMCA | $38,250 |
| LEAP LEARNENGAGEADVOCATEPARTNER | $35,000 |
| SANTA BARBARA EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY | $25,000 |
| CHILD ABUSE LISTENING MEDIATION | $25,000 |
| OPENMINDS FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| NEW BEGINNINGS COUNSELING CENTER | $24,000 |
| STORYTELLER CHILDREN'S CENTER | $22,500 |
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 (FY21–25, $444k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 93% 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 +31% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
85 repeat relationships — 70 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 16 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $169k 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
- CICALM INC4× · 2021–2025 · $302k · revenue +54%
- SBSanta Barbara Education Foundation4× · 2021–2025 · $165k · revenue +22%
- SFSCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF SANTA BARBARA3× · 2021–2024 · $121k · revenue +198%
Funded once
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SOLUTIONS FOR SANTA BARBARA COUNTYone grant, 2021 · $15k · revenue +5%- TRTHE REGENTS OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - EARLY ACADEMIC OUTREACH PROGRAMone grant, 2021 · $15k
- OSORGANIC SOUP KITCHENgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $15k · revenue +145%
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 mission of st. francis foundation of santa barbara is to promote and support health care.
To operate a school for grades 6-9, delivering a holistic program of academics, arts & athletics, community service, and outdoor education that fosters passion for life and learning, self trust, strength and courage to succeed, and…
Our mission is to protect public trail access build and maintain safe and sustainable trails and promote public engagement in land stewardship and trail use for all types of outdoor recreation.
The mission of the santa barbara south coast chamber of commerce is to create a strong local economy, promote the community, provide business resources and networking opportunities and represent business to the government.
The santa barbara public library foundation supports the long-term health and sustainability of the santa barbara public library through public-private partnerships.
To provide citizens with access to television and other electronic media resources in order to facilitate public dialogue, free speech and participatory democracy; to foster local creativity, education and culture; and to reflect our…
To pursue affordable housing for low to moderate income residents by fostering strategic relationships with other agencies.
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…
The mission of the Family Care Network is to enhance the wellbeing of children, adults, and families in partnership with our community.
To promote social and economic justice
Independent nonpartisan newsroom serving Santa Cruz County, California we are all watching and engaged in our local government, our needs are addressed, democracy works better and our community is stronger.
To operate community service centers to improve physical,social and financial conditions for the disabled and the elderly.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Santa Barbara Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Atterdag At Home Inc. 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 34 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
104 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. 104 of the 162 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 SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CALM INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION OF SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital ↗
- Who funds UC SANTA BARBARA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Channel Islands Young Men's Christian Association ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE AGENCY OF SANTA BARBARA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds NBCC ↗
- Who funds STORYTELLER CHILDRENS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Isla Vista Youth Projects Inc dba LEAP LearnEngageAdvocatePartner ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC PRIDE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Casa Serena ↗
- Who funds CUYAMA VALLEY FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds AHA ATTITUDE HARMONY ACHIEVEMENT ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA SCHOOL OF SQUASH ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF SANTA BARBARA INC ↗
- Who funds Pathpoint ↗
- Who funds ST VINCENT'S INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds Wilderness Youth Project Inc ↗
- Who funds Future Leaders of America ↗
- Who funds TRANSITION HOUSE ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S ECONOMIC VENTURES ↗
- Who funds Standing Together to End Sexual Assault ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM 4 YOUTH ↗
- Who funds HILLSIDE HOUSE ↗
- Who funds Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF GREATER SANTA BARBARA ↗
- Who funds Sanctuary Centers of Santa Barbara Inc ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF CARPINTERIA ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR SANTA BARBARA INC ↗
- Who funds Casa Pacifica Centers for Children & Families ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND 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: Hutton Foundation Dba Hutton Parker Foundation · Santa Barbara Foundation · Williams-Corbett Foundation · The Wood-Claeyssens Foundation · James S Bower Foundation · Ann Jackson Family Foundation · Latkin Charitable Foundation · June G Outhwaite Charitable Trust JS Poucher KL Englert & CM Cooney Co-Tr · Mosher Foundation · The McCune Foundation · Alice Tweed Tuohy Foundation · Roy and Ida Eagle 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 Towbes 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 Towbes Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Towbes 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.