California · Nonprofit
Growing Roots
Growing Roots (California) receives grants from 6 organizations whose IRS filings report $122,103 to it, the largest being CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ($75,000). 0 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 61% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2025
- $122k
- Funders on record
- 6
- Grants received
- $122k
- Net assets
- $68k
What Growing Roots does
Mission
Strengthening communities through building and maintaining urban farms and gardens in Southern California.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990-EZ.
Program
Growing Roots established a Food Waste Reduction Program, diverting an average of 1,000 lbs of food waste from landfills each year. The Grocery Pick-Up Program, the food distribution initiative, provides free garden grown produce to a recurring 35 student families each week. Growing Roots also established an after school garden school club at Emerson Middle School with the support of PREP
$100,406 spent100% of program spending
The program described on its FY2025 Form 990-EZ. Program spending in total: $100,406.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2021, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2021, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2024 to 2025, from $57k to $68k (+19%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
99% of Growing Roots’s revenue is contributions — more donation-reliant than the typical peer (94% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 1 of the last 3 reported years ran a deficit.
Leadership and staff
Chief executive
Julieta Munoz
President/CEO
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990-EZ.
Who funds it, year by year
Grant support over time, funder by funder — shade shows the grant size each year.
1 of 6 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 61% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of Growing Roots’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
Growing Roots leans on a few funders — its largest provides 61% of grant income and the top three 86%; half comes from just 1 funder.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 1 funder to its left
95% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund Growing Roots.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Where its funders are
61% of Growing Roots's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Of the $47k that is directly attributable, 64% of it comes from funders outside California, across 3 states.
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $75k arriving through sponsors registered in 1 state is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
Growing Roots has grown faster than three-quarters of the 1,936 food & nutrition nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 1,936 food & nutrition nonprofits $100k–$1M, FY2025
Organizations like Growing Roots
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In California
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Public support
100%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Growing Roots: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds Growing Roots?
- Growing Roots (California) receives grants from 6 organizations whose IRS filings report $122,103 to it, the largest being CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ($75,000). 0 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 61% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does Growing Roots have?
- IRS filings report 6 organizations giving $122,103 in grants to Growing Roots.
- Who is the largest funder of Growing Roots?
- CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $75,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Growing Roots find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in California. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Growing Roots →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2021–2025), and the filings of 6 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing