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California · Nonprofit
The Breakthrough Institute (California) is funded by 36 grantmakers whose IRS filings report $21,304,321 in grants to it, the largest being BERNARD AND ANNE SPITZER ($4,800,000). 22 of them have funded it in more than one year.
Against its field
The Breakthrough Institute runs a healthier operating margin than half of the 1,995 environment nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 1,995 environment nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2024
Revenue, expenses and net assets — each indexed to 100 at its first filing year, so you read the trajectory, not the magnitude. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
The funding model — what share of revenue comes from contributions, programs, investments and other sources — and whether it's shifting.
95% of The Breakthrough Institute’s revenue is contributions — more donation-reliant than the typical peer (88% for the typical peer).
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 1 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.
$25k from 1 funders in 2025, up from $1.0M and 5 in 2017.
12 of 36 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 43% 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 The Breakthrough Institute’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 36 funders by total. Association, not causation.
The Breakthrough Institute has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 23% of grant income, and it takes 3 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 3 funders to its left
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 55% · 2018 56% · 2019 43% · 2020 38% · 2021 37% · 2022 37% · 2023 36% · 2024 52% · 2025 100% — growing more concentrated.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration.
48% of The Breakthrough Institute's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 61% 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.
The Breakthrough Institute draws 77% of its grant income from funders outside California — its reputation reaches beyond the state, across 14 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Grantmakers that don’t fund you yet, surfaced two ways: they back organizations that share your funders, or their grantees resemble your mission. The ones both signals agree on come first. Your 36 funders put you under-funded among the 400 organizations that share them.
From the co-funder graph (funders backing at least two comparable organizations, shrunk for grantee count, donor-advised and mega-funds excluded) and the universe embeddings. A research starting point; overlap is association, not a guarantee of fit.
Nonprofits whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over the universe of US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
83% of spending goes to programs.
81%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Operates in 26 states
Every figure is read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML — this organization’s own return for FY2024 (financials across 2017–2024), and the filings of 36funders 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. view filing