· Private foundation
Zendesk Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
69% of Zendesk Charitable Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to American Online Giving Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 1 organization directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year Zendesk Charitable Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 31 organizations, $3M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2022
- Under $10k9 grants · $49k
- $10k–50k53 grants · $933k
- $50k–250k15 grants · $1.1M
- $250k+2 grants · $600k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| International Rescue Committee Inc | $300,000 |
| World Central Kitchen Inc | $300,000 |
| Team4Tech Foundation | $200,000 |
| International Rescue Committee Inc | $200,000 |
| NPower Inc | $50,000 |
| The Immigration Project dba Mobile Pathways | $50,000 |
| JOBCARE CLG | $50,000 |
| KINDWORK INC | $50,000 |
| Rare dba Rare Inc | $50,000 |
| NAIROBITS TRUST | $50,000 |
| GLIDE | $50,000 |
| TechSoup Global | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| THE ASIA FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
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 — 63% of grant dollars ($12M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 37% that went abroad ($6.8M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY17–23, $1.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, 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
Beyond the US — 37% of all-years giving ($6.8M)
24 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 990 filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 28% of Zendesk Charitable Foundation’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 +37% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
90 repeat relationships — 41 still active in FY2022, 49 since wound down; 33 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- IRInternational Rescue Committee INC3× · 2020–2022 · $1.3M · revenue +63%
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC2× · 2021–2022 · $809k · revenue +167%- GFGLIDE FOUNDATION6× · 2017–2022 · $414k · revenue +51%
Funded once
- NUNATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE INCone grant, 2020 · $500k · revenue -65%
WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INCone grant, 2021 · $500k · revenue -10%
FRIENDS OF THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue +117%
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.
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,…
Building a movement of diverse, upwardly mobile college grads overcoming underemployment through digital skills and peer connections.
Common future is a network of pioneering leaders across the u.s. and canada who work deeply within their communities to create alternative approaches to business, philanthropy, and investing. we envision an economy that has transitioned…
See schedule okqed serves the people of northern california with a community-supported alternative to commercial media, providing the knowledge needed to make informed decisions; convening community dialogue; bringing the arts to everyone;…
Upturn advances equity and justice in the design, governance, and use of technology.
Unitedly is a nonprofit organization based in San Mateo County, California. Unitedly was established to ensure Asian families and communities have access to equitable opportunities and resources to thrive in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Common impact's mission is to strengthen the capacity of social change organizations, enabling them to better run and scale their programs. through its partnership with companies, common impact taps into the business skills and expertise…
Ca fwd drives action to identify solutions that can be taken to scale to meet the challenges the state is facing. the organization is driven by the belief that regional solutions across the state will help ensure economic, environmental,…
FFWD accelerates the growth of technology nonprofits by providing financial and human capital to help scale technology solutions for education, environmental, health, and human rights issues.
To support equitable access to economic opportunities for immigrants, refugees, low-income, marginalized, and underserved communities in king county and the united states.
Our mission is to create a fair and inclusive economy where underserved people have quality financial choices and opportunities to improve their economic well-being. we find and help build innovative companies with the potential to reach…
Our mission is to help manufacturers thrive, innovate, and create good jobs, for a more diverse and sustainable Bay Area.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The San Francisco Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Rocket Learning 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 29 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
96 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. 96 of the 183 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 AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds International Rescue Committee INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds GLIDE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TEAM4TECH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ASIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CURRY SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds COMPASS FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Episcopal Community Services ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN GATE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KINDWORK INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF SAN FRANCISCO INC ↗
- Who funds ASIAN AMERICANS ADVANCING JUSTICE - AAJC 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: Madison Community Foundation · The Evjue Foundation Inc · Madison Gas and Electric Foundation Inc · The San Francisco Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Endres Manufacturing Foundation Inc · Trustage Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · United Way of Dane County Inc · McNabb Foundation · Tides 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 Zendesk Charitable 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.
- Year Up Inc — 0% 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 Zendesk Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Zendesk Charitable 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.