· Private foundation
Universal Sunlight Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $16k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $45k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $80k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER | $1,000,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $80,000 |
| NAMO AMITABHA SOCIETY | $30,000 |
| UNITED CHARITY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| CENTER FOR COASTAL STUDIES | $6,020 |
| BUDDHAS LIGHT INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIA | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
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 US giving — 88% of grant dollars ($9.0M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 12% that went abroad ($1.3M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY18–18, $30k) 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.
Beyond the US — 12% of all-years giving ($1.3M)
3 countries, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
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 +72% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 2 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER3× · 2022–2024 · $4.0M · revenue +25%- CCCHINESE CLUB OF SAN MARINO4× · 2019–2023 · $816k · revenue +152% · 46% of their budget
- HEHENRY E HUNTINGTON LIBRARY AND ART GALLERY3× · 2018–2020 · $340k · revenue +112%
Funded once
- EVEAST VALLEY HUNTINGTON HOSPITALone grant, 2022 · $1.0M
- FWFORSHANG WORLD FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $300k · revenue -88% · 91% of their budget
- TNThe NCTU Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $102k · revenue +220% · 28% of their budget
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.
Religious culture and education, meditation and religions comparative study
Providing professional training of Chinese Medicine (TCM), including acupuncture, Chinese herbology, acupressure, Qigong and so on, granting the students Masters degree. Its a three to four years teaching program.
Study and advancement of Buddhism religion
Khyentse foundation is a nonprofit organization incorporated in the state of washington, usa, in november, 2001. founded by dzongsar khyentse rinpoche, the foundation aims to preserve and share the buddha's wisdom with everyone. primarily…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chinese Club of San Marino and the most unlike its peers is Longchen Nyingtik Institute. 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 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.
19 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. 19 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 CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds CHINESE CLUB OF SAN MARINO ↗
- Who funds HENRY E HUNTINGTON LIBRARY AND ART GALLERY ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds FORSHANG WORLD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Longchen Nyingtik Institute ↗
- Who funds The NCTU Foundation ↗
- Who funds TAIWANESE AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP FUND ↗
- Who funds UNITED CHARITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ASIAN YOUTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COASTAL STUDIES INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Amitabha Foundation ↗
- Who funds ORANGE COUNTY ASSOCIATION FOR BUDDHIST PRACTICES INC ↗
- Who funds Buddhas Light Intl Association ↗
- Who funds ARCADIA POLICE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ISHA FOUNDATION 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: Asian Pacific Community Fund of Southern California · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Universal Sunlight 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.
- Center for Coastal Studies Inc — 26% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Universal Sunlight Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Universal Sunlight 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.