California · Nonprofit
IOLA Foundation
IOLA Foundation (California) receives grants from 52 organizations whose IRS filings report $3,025,618 to it, the largest being PAYPAL CHARITABLE GIVING FUND ($665,523). 21 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 55% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2025
- $1.8M
- Funders on record
- 52
- Grants received
- $3.0M
- Net assets
- $715k
What IOLA Foundation does
Mission
It Gets Better's mission is to uplift, empower, and connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth around the globe.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
It Gets Better EDU exists to ensure our uplifting and informative stories reach LGBTQ+ youth and their peers wherever learning takes place. With an impactful youth ambassador program, student-driven grantmaking initiatives, and a growing library of free educational resources for educators and student leaders, thousands of middle and high school students engage with It Gets Better EDU programming every year.In 2025, It Gets Better EDU, with support from American Eagle, the MAC Viva Glam Foundation, Humble Bundle, and Tumblr, returned with season four of It Gets Better: Changemakers. We awarded $252,500 in grants to 27 schools and community organizations throughout the United States. Grants supported a range of LGBTQ+ inclusive projects, from community art projects and queer proms to launching Genders & Sexualities Alliances and Pride celebrations. Since 2022, It Gets Better has distributed more than $1.6 million in grants through this program to support 170 projects across the United States and Canada.Throughout the year, our Youth Voices ambassadors proved themselves to be powerful spokespeople for both It Gets Better and their peers. Two ambassadors kicked off the year by hosting…
$504,601 spentof which $252,500 as grants45% of program spendingStorytelling is at the heart of our effort to empower LGBTQ+ youth around the globe. We share stories that inspire hope, stories that spark conversations, and stories that can inform and positively influence a sexual orientation and/or gender identity journey. Every It Gets Better story offers a unique, wisdom-infused perspective designed to show LGBTQ+ youth that through community, shared experiences, and life-affirming resources, things can and will get better. This simple message of hope has been translated across all forms of media, including social media, television specials, best-selling books, theater, museum exhibits and more. It has attracted millions of followers and supporters from around the world. It Gets Better is the destination for LGBTQ+ youth exploring their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.In 2025, It Gets Better shared uplifting content and messages that reached a global audience of more than 2 million people across TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Bluesky, and more than 190,000 unique visitors explored ItGetsBetter.org, our information-rich website, to engage with resources designed to inform LGBTQ+ youth on their sexual…
$367,763 spent33% of program spendingIt Gets Better is the world's largest storytelling effort to empower LGBTQ+ youth. Investing in local, like-minded organizations outside the US, It Gets Better brings storytelling and other life-affirming support to communities of LGBTQ+ youth around the globe. By the end of 2025, the It Gets Better Global Affiliate Network continued to span 19 countries across four continents, with global storytelling efforts happening in eight languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German, Greek, French, and Hungarian.In May, as an introduction to Pride Month, It Gets Better hosted its Global Summit live on Twitch. The summit drew participation and viewers from 14 countries in English and Spanish, including Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and Peru. The event featured youth-led panels, gaming segments, and highlighted our growing It Gets Better Espaol initiative.Our global affiliates continued to celebrate major wins throughout the year. It Gets Better Canada received more than $1.5 million CAD in funding from the Canadian Department of Women and Gender Equality to support 2SLGBTQI+ youth. The funding helped support the…
$243,351 spent22% of program spending
The 3 programs described on its FY2025 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $1,115,715.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 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 2022 to 2023, from $2.7M to $920k (−66%).
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.
Government-grant reliance: 2019 1% · 2020 0% · 2021 3% · 2022 0%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
100% of IOLA Foundation’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (82% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 3 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Brian Wenke
Chief Executive Officer
Board chair
Paul Dien
Chair & President
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 1 funder to 14 funders, grant income rose $500 → $473k.
13 of 52 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 55% 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 IOLA Foundation’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 52 funders by total. 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
IOLA Foundation has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 22% of grant income, and it takes 4 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 4 funders to its left
72% 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 IOLA Foundation.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 100% · 2018 75% · 2019 60% · 2020 25% · 2021 48% · 2022 30% · 2023 28% — diversifying over time.
“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.
How long its funders stay
22% of IOLA Foundation's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 40% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
55% of IOLA Foundation'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 $1.3M that is directly attributable, 84% of it comes from funders outside California, across 19 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $1.7M arriving through sponsors registered in 10 states 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
IOLA Foundation runs a healthier operating margin than half of the 1,645 philanthropy nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 1,645 philanthropy nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2025
Organizations like IOLA Foundation
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.
Where the money goes
73% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
93%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 30 states
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for IOLA Foundation: 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 IOLA Foundation?
- IOLA Foundation (California) receives grants from 52 organizations whose IRS filings report $3,025,618 to it, the largest being PAYPAL CHARITABLE GIVING FUND ($665,523). 21 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 55% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does IOLA Foundation have?
- IRS filings report 52 organizations giving $3,025,618 in grants to IOLA Foundation, 21 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of IOLA Foundation?
- PAYPAL CHARITABLE GIVING FUND is the largest funder on record, with $665,523 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like IOLA Foundation 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.
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 52 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 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing