California · Nonprofit
SAVE MOUNT DIABLO
SAVE MOUNT DIABLO (California) receives grants from 55 organizations whose IRS filings report $4,976,578 to it, the largest being MARIN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ($1,282,000). 32 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 67% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2025
- $6.0M
- Funders on record
- 55
- Grants received
- $5.0M
- Net assets
- $27M
What Save Mount Diablo does
Mission
Save Mount Diablo's mission is to preserve mount diablo's peaks, surrounding foothills, and watersheds; and its sustaining diablo range, through land acquisition and preservation strategies designed to protect the mountain's natural beauty, biological diversity, and historic and agricultural heritage; enhance our area's quality of life; and provide educational and recreational opportunities consistent with protection of natural resources.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Land acquisition & land use: Save Mount Diablo continues long-term negotiations to protect important properties.- closed escrow and acquired the 98-acre ginochio schwendel property for $1,370,000 plus closing costs in march 2025. It is adjacent to smd's marsh creek 5 property. It includes an undercrossing of marsh creek road for wildlife and a segment of marsh creek, contra costa county's second longest and most undisturbed creek. It is a strategic piece of the marsh creek watershed containing rare volcanic habitat with very high conservation value.- land use: Save Mount Diablo regularly monitors the agendas of 70 different planning committees and public agencies. This work can take time as we research, write letters, testify, and collaborate on solutions. We responded to more than a dozen land use projects in the 2024 - 2025 fiscal year.- furthered our diablo range expansion work developing new partners and advancing advocacy efforts to protect important lands like tesla and del puerto canyon.- prepared for the first ever diablo range convening to be held in june 2025. We anticipate over 150 individuals representing over 60 groups discussing conservation throughout the diablo…
$1,020,565 spentof which $20,468 as grants40% of program spendingStewardship: Save Mount Diablo currently owns and/or manages 21 properties totaling 2190-acres. Save Mount Diablo also holds perpetual conservation easements on 3 properties, totaling 176-acres.- successfully stewarded the thousands of acres under our care (planting native species, removing invasive species, regular property monitoring, etc.).- more than 685 volunteers completed over 5,996 hours of service in the 2024 - 2025 fiscal year. They have supported all our activities across departments throughout the year. Recurrent stewardship volunteers include 28 property monitors and 34 volunteer stewards.- volunteers: our volunteers are the heroes and heroines of land preservation. They help make our work possible, whether it be by helping restore ecological systems, becoming a hike leader, assisting with event registration, staffing aid stations, taking photos, or setting up equipment. Their hard work and generosity are what help make this organization's efforts so successful.- stewards also continued monthly property outings, and organized small workdays for restoration plantings, weeding, mulching, watering native plantings and clean up of our properties.- staff continued…
$869,002 spentof which $699 as grants$27,674 earned by the program34% of program spendingEducation & outreach and recreation: Save Mount Diablo offers numerous educational, outreach, and recreational programs to help directly connect our communities to nature and educate them about it, to provide opportunities to do service projects for our natural world, and to diversify the types of people served and involved with our land conservation work. These programs include, but are not limited to, the following:- our discover diablo free public outings series.- our diablo conservation experience, for local middle school and high schools.- our young diablo explorers program for 3rd to 5th graders.- our smd cares program in collaboration with mount diablo unified school district.- our dr. Mary bowerman science and research program, which provides small grants to encourage more scientific research in the northern diablo range, bioblitz, etc.- continue to enable the public to enjoy our new mangini ranch educational preserve, run with a free online reservation system with over 4 miles of trails built there with the help of volunteers and local students.- staff and volunteers led 14 tabling events in the community to educate, inspire and connect the public to diablo range and some…
$638,403 spentof which $55,562 as grants$32,004 earned by the program25% of program spending
The 3 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $2,527,970.
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 2023 to 2024, from $24M to $28M (+14%).
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: 2021 8% · 2024 0% · 2025 14%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
89% of SAVE MOUNT DIABLO’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (13% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 2 of the last 7 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
Edward Sortwell Clement Jr
Executive director
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 10 funders to 21 funders, grant income rose $114k → $690k.
15 of 55 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 67% 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 SAVE MOUNT DIABLO’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 55 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
SAVE MOUNT DIABLO has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 26% 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
70% 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 SAVE MOUNT DIABLO.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 37% · 2018 71% · 2019 30% · 2020 16% · 2021 35% · 2022 17% · 2023 41% — 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
38% of SAVE MOUNT DIABLO's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 58% 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
67% of SAVE MOUNT DIABLO'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 $1.7M that is directly attributable, 57% of it comes from California funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $3.3M 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
SAVE MOUNT DIABLO runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 1,767 recreation & sports nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 1,767 recreation & sports nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2025
Organizations like SAVE MOUNT DIABLO
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
64% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
74%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 15 states
Part of a family of 1 related entity
- Charitable Remainder Trust (1) · corp_trust
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for SAVE MOUNT DIABLO: 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 SAVE MOUNT DIABLO?
- SAVE MOUNT DIABLO (California) receives grants from 55 organizations whose IRS filings report $4,976,578 to it, the largest being MARIN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ($1,282,000). 32 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 67% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does SAVE MOUNT DIABLO have?
- IRS filings report 55 organizations giving $4,976,578 in grants to SAVE MOUNT DIABLO, 32 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of SAVE MOUNT DIABLO?
- MARIN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $1,282,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like SAVE MOUNT DIABLO 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 55 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