· Public charity
Women's Foundation of California
WOMEN'S FOUNDATION OF CALIFORNIA amplifies the voices and experiences of community leaders, redistributes knowledge, power, and resources, and mobilizes communities and funders to advance justice for all.
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 $10k14 grants · $95k
- $10k–50k40 grants · $861k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $497k
- $250k+1 grant · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TIME FOR CHANGE FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| CENTER FOR CULTURAL POWER | $125,000 |
| NEW VENTURE FUND | $125,000 |
| HARNESS COMMUNITY | $125,000 |
| HUMAN OPTIONS INC | $65,000 |
| SOCIAL AND ENVIROMENTAL ENTREPRENEURS | $57,000 |
| TRANSGENDER LAW CENTER | $47,000 |
| TIDES CENTER | $47,000 |
| SAN GABRIEL VALLEY LGBTQ CENTER | $45,000 |
| CENTER FOR EMPOWERED POLITICS EDUCATION FUND | $44,000 |
| SOGOREA TE' LAND TRUST | $35,000 |
| STARTING OVER | $30,000 |
| EQUAL RIGHTS ADVOCATES | $30,000 |
| TRANSGENDER DISTRICT | $30,000 |
| COURAGE CALIFORNIA | $30,000 |
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 human-services grants (FY17–25, $6.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 57% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 21% of Women's Foundation of California’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +35% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
217 repeat relationships — 48 still active in FY2025, 169 since wound down; 8 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, 94% 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
Time For Change Foundation5× · 2020–2025 · $1.4M · revenue +94%
THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL POWER7× · 2019–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +578%- HCHARNESS COMMUNITY3× · 2023–2025 · $583k · revenue +36%
Funded once
Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Countiesone grant, 2018 · $437k · revenue -33%- IIILLUMINATIVE INCone grant, 2024 · $200k · revenue -97%
- YBYERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTSone grant, 2020 · $127k · revenue -28%
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.
San Francisco Women Against Rape is a community-based rape crisis center. We provide support to sexual assault survivors, their family members, significant others, and friends. We use education as a tool of prevention. Direct services…
A long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build greater economic power for workers and community members through employee rights at work and access to good jobs,…
Asian Immigrant Women Advocates empowers low-income, limited English speaking immigrant women and youth through education, leadership development and civic participation programs.
Legal Link removes legal barriers that prolong poverty by adding critically needed capacity to the legal ecosystem.
The Network is a group of 40+ member organizations dedicated to improving the lives of those impacted by gender-based violence through education, public policy and advocacy, and connecting community members with direct service providers.…
The mission of domestic violence and sexual assault services is to support individuals affected by domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexual exploitation, and to lead the community toward ending these abuses of power.
CVS is dedicated to working to end sexual assault and family violence through prevention, crisis services, and treatment.
The California Center for Movement Legal Services (Movement Legal) provides legal services in the pursuit of improving the lives of California's traditionally underserved residents, carrying out legal work that fosters community led policy…
The survivor justice center secures justice for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault and empowers them to create their own future.
Safe Embrace is committed to ending the cycle of domestic and sexual violence with innovative prevention and intervention services. We help victims of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking become survivors by providing…
LOTUS Legal Clinic invests in survivors of human trafficking and sexutal violence by innovatively blending comprehensive legal services, victims rights representation and therapeutic arts programming that results in survivor-driven…
The mission of SafeHouse Center is to empower survivors of both sexual and intimate partner violence by providing advocacy, support, and promoting social change within our community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ywca of Glendale and Pasadena and the most unlike its peers is Tomkat Ranch Educational Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 32 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.3% 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.
326 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. 326 of the 332 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 PHILANTHROPIC VENTURES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Time For Change Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL POWER ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL GOOD FUND INC ↗
- Who funds Alliance for Girls ↗
- Who funds HARNESS COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds BLACK WOMEN FOR WELLNESS ↗
- Who funds TIDES CENTER ↗
- Who funds Human Options Inc ↗
- Who funds CORA Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse ↗
- Who funds EMPOWER TEHAMA ↗
- Who funds RAINBOW SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Healthy Alternatives to Violent Environm ↗
- Who funds Family Violence Law Center ↗
- Who funds Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Counties ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA LATINAS FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA PARTNERSHIP TO END DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ACCESS REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds NEO Philanthropy Inc ↗
- Who funds Mujeres Unidas y Activas ↗
- Who funds SISTERSONG INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRANSLATIN COALITION ↗
- Who funds Community United Against Violence Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN'S FREEDOM CENTER ↗
- Who funds Jenesse Center Inc ↗
- Who funds ACT for Women and Girls ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds Strong Hearted Native Womens Coalition Inc ↗
- Who funds MIXTECO INDIGENA COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PROJECT ↗
- Who funds BLACK EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL HEALTH COLLEC ↗
- Who funds Freefrom ↗
- Who funds EQUAL RIGHTS ADVOCATES ↗
- Who funds California Child Care Resource and Referral Network ↗
- Who funds Forward Together ↗
- Who funds ASIAN HEALTH SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CHICO FEMINIST WOMENS HEALTH CENTER dba WOMENS HEALTH SPECIALISTS ↗
- Who funds SCHOLARMATCH 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: California Physicians' Service Fdn Dba Blue Shield of California Fdn · The California Wellness Foundation · The California Endowment · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · Sierra Health Foundation Center for Health Program Management · California Partnership to End Domestic Violence · East Bay Community Foundation · The James Irvine Foundation · Weingart Foundation · The San Francisco Foundation · Liberty Hill Foundation · The David and Lucile Packard 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 Women's Foundation of California 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.