California · Nonprofit
SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM
SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM (California) receives grants from 72 organizations whose IRS filings report $5,207,620 to it, the largest being SCHLINGER CHRISMAN FOUNDATION NORTHERN TRUST COMPANY TRUSTEE ($1,205,000). 59 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $3.0M
- Funders on record
- 72
- Grants received
- $5.2M
- Net assets
- $5.3M
What Santa Barbara Maritime Museum does
Mission
Creating excellent exhibits and educational experiences that celebrate the santa barbara channel and illuminate our rich connections with the sea.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Connecting the community to maritime heritage: exhibitsthe Santa Barbara Maritime Museum's purpose is to preserve and present to the public the maritime heritage of california's central coast, while providing an ongoing educational platform to study and record human interaction with the marine environment. The museum's mission statement is creating quality exhibits and educational experiences that celebrate the santa barbara channel and illuminate our rich connections with the sea. The museum's exhibits, both permanent and rotating, highlight the local maritime history of the california central coast and give visitors and locals a sense of santa barbara's 13,000-year maritime history. Exhibits honor people such as commercial divers, commercial fishermen, and lighthouse keepers who, through everyday actions, enrich our lives today. The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum (sbmm) receives over 40,000 visitors annually and focuses on interactive exhibits and hands-on educational programming. In 2020 sbmm received a 10-year accreditation from the american alliance of museums (aam), placing it into the top echelon of museums across the country. Of the more than 35,000 museums in the united…
$1,345,627 spent$117,653 earned by the program79% of program spendingEducationthe museum's education programming continues to expand, now providing programs for elementary and high school students across santa barbara county and beyond. In the past few years programming has expanded to lompoc high school students, and new elementary schools in carpinteria, in addition to having schools from bakersfield and ventura county visit. In fy2025 sbmm served 4,813 students through 146 programs and 2,434 adults through 50 programs. Sbmm serves as the fiscal agent for the santa barbara channel whale heritage area (sbcwha), which became the ninth such designated area and only the second in the united states. The museum's whales are superheroes! Program, which provides both instruction and an art activity to show how whales help with climate change, helps fulfill the sbcwha's education role. The museum's nationally recognized maritime on the move (motm) program has won numerous awards, including: being named a finalist in the american alliance of museums 2021 edcom award for innovation and education award pandemic edition, being awarded the california association of museums california natural resources agency secretarys public education award for excellence in…
$351,646 spent$30,746 earned by the program21% of program spending
The 2 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $1,697,273.
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 2024 to 2025, from $4.8M to $5.8M (+20%).
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: 2017 1% · 2018 1% · 2019 0% · 2020 10% · 2021 19% · 2022 0%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
87% of SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM’s revenue is contributions — more donation-reliant than the typical peer (63% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 4 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
Greg Gorga
Executive director
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 24 funders to 40 funders, grant income rose $338k → $753k.
7 of 72 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 13% 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 SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 72 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
SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 23% of grant income, and it takes 6 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 6 funders to its left
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 17% · 2018 15% · 2019 20% · 2020 29% · 2021 27% · 2022 29% · 2023 33% — growing more concentrated.
“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
65% of SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 82% 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
61% of SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM's grant income comes from California funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $655k arriving through sponsors registered in 5 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
SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM runs a healthier operating margin than half of the 3,230 arts & culture nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 3,230 arts & culture nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2025
Organizations like SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM
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
71% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
79%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM: 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 SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM?
- SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM (California) receives grants from 72 organizations whose IRS filings report $5,207,620 to it, the largest being SCHLINGER CHRISMAN FOUNDATION NORTHERN TRUST COMPANY TRUSTEE ($1,205,000). 59 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM have?
- IRS filings report 72 organizations giving $5,207,620 in grants to SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM, 59 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM?
- SCHLINGER CHRISMAN FOUNDATION NORTHERN TRUST COMPANY TRUSTEE is the largest funder on record, with $1,205,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like SANTA BARBARA MARITIME MUSEUM 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 Santa Barbara Maritime Museum →
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 72 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