· Private foundation
Zh Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2022–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MVLA Soccer Club | $2,275 |
| Helios School | $1,267 |
| Monterey Bay Aquarium | $875 |
| Happy Hollow Park Zoo | $550 |
| California Academy of Sciences | $299 |
| Discovery Cube | $295 |
| Santa Cruz Childrens Museum of Disc | $290 |
| Bowers Museum | $286 |
| CuriOdyssey | $160 |
| San Francisco Zoo and Gardens | $143 |
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 (FY22–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 46% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +74% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 1 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, 22% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- HSHelios School2× · 2024–2025 · $2k
- BMBISHOP MUSEUM2× · 2022–2024 · $700 · revenue +74%
- CCURIODYSSEY2× · 2023–2025 · $196 · revenue +9%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $500 · revenue +59%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $500
- ZSZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGOone grant, 2022 · $400 · revenue +12%
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 museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The museum's mission statement is "turn on the science: inspire learning. inform policy. improve lives."
Children's discovery museum of san jose inspires creativity, curiosity and lifelong learning.
Conserving nature through science and discovery.
The Museum inspires wonder, discovery, and stewardship of our natural world. The Museum is a catalyst for conservation and a valued learning resource, facilitating active scientific and historical inquiry for all ages.
We harness the power of plants for humankind and share the joy and beauty of tropical gardening with everyone. fairchild tropical botanic garden is a museum of tropical plants within a world famous, 83-acre designed landscape. it was…
The mission of the museum of science is to inspire a lifelong love of science in everyone. through exhibits, curricula, programs, and events, both live and virtual, we aim to make science and scientific thinking accessible, engaging, and…
Pacific science center (pacsci) ignites curiosity in every child and fuels a passion for discovery, experimentation, and critical thinking in all of us.
The mission is "to understand the natural world and inspire everyone to care for it." the academy implements its mission through understanding the diversity of life; developing and applying science to protect the environment; and informing…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is San Francisco Zoological Society and the most unlike its peers is University of Hawaii Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 19 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 MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BISHOP MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY SCIENCE CENTER OF ORANGE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Santa Cruz Childrens Museum of Discovery ↗
- Who funds CHARLES W BOWERS MUSEUM CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds CURIODYSSEY ↗
- Who funds SAN FRANCISCO ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE TECH INTERACTIVE ↗
- Who funds FOOTHILL-DEANZA COMMUNITY COLLEGES FOUNDATION ↗
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 · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Zh 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 Zh Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Zh 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.