· Private foundation
Ying Cai and Wann S Lee Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k21 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $145k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $36,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC RADIO | $20,000 |
| PUBLIC MEDIA GROUP OF SOUTHERN | $12,000 |
| MUSEIQUE | $12,000 |
| SAN DIEGO KOREAN AMERICAN CENTER | $5,000 |
| ASIAN AMERICAN ARTS ALLIANCE | $3,500 |
| WESTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY | $3,000 |
| MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| AQUARIUM OF THE PACIFIC | $2,500 |
| NATIONAL PARK TRUST | $2,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC | $2,000 |
| DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS USA | $2,000 |
| STRAY CAT ALLIANCE | $1,500 |
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 (FY19–24, $36k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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.
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 100% of Ying Cai and Wann S Lee Foundation Inc’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. Read by recipient address, 87% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 0% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +34% since the first grant, against -1% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 22 since wound down; 8 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k 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 RADIO8× · 2017–2024 · $187k · revenue +20%
University of Illinois Foundation6× · 2019–2024 · $65k · revenue +39%- LGLINK GLOBAL3× · 2017–2019 · $50k · revenue +52%
Funded once
- C1CHP 11-99 FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $15k · revenue +43%
- SBST BALDRICK'S FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2020 · $11k · revenue -9%
- IVINLAND VALLEY COUNCIL OF CHURCHESone grant, 2020 · $5k
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 union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The ucla foundation is the giving, receiving, and investing arm of the ucla campus. the foundation enables private donors to help build, sustain and advance one of the world's finest academic and research institutions. private philanthropy…
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
To advocate for policy changes by governments and corporations in order to preserve ocean life and return the oceans to their former abundance.
California ocean science trust (ost) is a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating progress towards a healthy and productive ocean future for california. created by state legislation, ost bridges the gap between cutting-edge…
Ocean conservancy unites science, people, and policy to protect our ocean, today and for generations to come.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
The los angeles conservancy is a nonprofit membership organization that works through education and advocacy to recognize, preserve, and revitalize the historic architectural and cultural resources of los angeles county.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is California Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Coral Conservancy. 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 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 — 2% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 73 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 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds LINK GLOBAL ↗
- Who funds MuseIque ↗
- Who funds University of the Pacific ↗
- Who funds THE SAN DIEGO KOREAN AMERICAN SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMERS GREATER LOS ANGELES ↗
- Who funds CHP 11-99 FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ST BALDRICK'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE OCEAN CLEANUP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds THE CORAL RESTORATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN WOMEN'S CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds 4S Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds RAINFOREST TRUST ↗
- Who funds MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES CLEANTECH INCUBATOR ↗
- Who funds UNION RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds CORAL CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA 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: The Annenberg Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Online Giving 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 Ying Cai and Wann S Lee Foundation Inc 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.
- National Park Trust Inc — 51% of income from government
- Xerces Society Inc — 22% of income from government
- The Coral Restoration Foundation Inc — 16% of income from government
- Florida Institute of Technology Inc — 5% 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.