· Private foundation
Ward Family Foundation
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2021.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- $10k–50k3 grants · $70k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $310k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SO CALIF PUBLIC RADIO | $135,000 |
| BIOSPHERE FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| THE PRENTICE SCHOOL | $50,000 |
| BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| VALUE SCHOOLS FOUNDATION | $35,000 |
| MATER DEI MONARCH ENDOWMENT | $25,000 |
| LEARNING RIGHTS LAW CENTER | $10,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–21) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 75% of your 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 +66% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
7 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2021, 3 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (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 FY2021, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $110k 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
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC RADIO2× · 2017–2019 · $835k · revenue +20%- VSVALUE SCHOOLS FOUNDATION2× · 2019–2021 · $60k · revenue +66%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE FOUNDATION2× · 2019–2020 · $50k · revenue +181%
Funded once
- PEPAZLO EDUCATION FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue +16%
- AAAPEX ACADEMYone grant, 2017 · $25k
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 las mission is to create a learning community where students: utilize bilingualism and biliteracy (spanish and english) to achieve academic excellence and apply skills in real-world situations and diverse settings; develop and exhibit…
Pacific collegiate school's mission is to provide exemplary, standards based college preparatory and fine arts education for public middle and high school students of santa cruz county and bordering areas.
The peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
The mission of the silicon schools fund is to improve education through supporting the launch of excellent new schools, improving academic instruction in existing schools, and by funding some of the boldest innovations in education…
A private school that cultivates and celebrates the intellectual, imaginative, and humanitarian promise of each student in a community that practices mutual respect, embraces diversity, and inspires passion for learning.
The association serves its members by creating resources that enable california school administrators to develop and apply creative leadership and management skills and in turn, improve the educational process for all students.
The philadelphia school educates children for a future that is impossible to know but not impossible to shape. learn here. go anywhere.
To ensure students reach their fullest potential through access to learning spaces that honor and celebrate students' rich cultural heritage and challenge them with rigorous and relevant learning experiences designed to make them active…
The mission of tlc is to educate diverse students through a rigorous, standards-based, collegepreparatory program to become conscientious, caring, and responsible 21st century citizens. tlc is grounded in an inclusive vision of teaching…
A diverse and sustainable learning community dedicated to discovery and excellence in teaching, scholarship and practice, pacific university inspires students to think, care, create and pursue justice in our world.
Sonoma charter school seeks to achieve academic excellence through engaged learning in a setting that involves students, teachers, and parents.
To focus on the success of each student & involve parents in the education of their children. the school is comitted to providing appropriate physical space, materials, qualified personnel, and staff development in order to guide the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Pazlo Education Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Biosphere Foundation Formerly Planetary Coral Reef Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 12 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 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC RADIO ↗
- Who funds BIOSPHERE FOUNDATION FORMERLY PLANETARY CORAL REEF FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PAZLO EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VALUE SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Prentice School ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEARNING RIGHTS LAW CENTER ↗
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: American Endowment Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Ward 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.
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 Ward Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ward Family 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.