California · Nonprofit
The Impact Fund
The Impact Fund (California) receives grants from 34 organizations whose IRS filings report $3,956,421 to it, the largest being BNY MELLON CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($1,500,000). 15 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 70% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2025
- $4.2M
- Funders on record
- 34
- Grants received
- $4.0M
- Net assets
- $3.1M
What The Impact Fund does
Mission
Supports class action public interest litigation and awards grants in the areas of human and civil rights, elimination of unlawful discrimination, environmental justice and the relief of poverty. Provides technical support, advice/counseling, training & representation to public interest lawyers. The Impact Fund does not receive any federal funding.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Grants The Impact Fund makes recoverable grants to lawyers, small law firms, and nonprofit organizations involved in impact litigation. We fund civil rights, human rights, anti-poverty, and environmental justice cases. Most of our grants are for class actions, but we also fund multi-plaintiff and environmental justice cases that aim to significantly affect a larger system or lead to significant law reform. In the 2024/25 fiscal year, the Impact Fund disbursed a total of $690,000 in grant funding via 25 recoverable grants. The Impact Fund has committed around $10 million to justice-related causes since the organizations inception.
$2,937,477 spentof which $735,691 as grants$1,445,695 earned by the program100% of program spendingAdvocacy We advocate for economic, environmental, racial, and social justice as both lead and co-counsel in a small number of complex impact litigation cases. We also author several amicus briefs in important class action cases each year and participate in notice and comment rulemaking for administrative rules and regulations on relevant issues. We also engage in a limited amount of advocacy on these issues.
Education and Training In September, we presented our three-day Class Action Training Institute, taking 40 students through all the phases of a mock class action. In February, we presented our annual Class Action Conference, which attracted 277 practitioners from around the nation, sharing current news, developments, and best practices for class action litigation. We also presented multiple training courses, seminars, and workshops on class action strategy, current issues, and practical skills for class action practitioners and legal services organizations.
The 3 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $2,937,477.
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 $3.4M to $5.2M (+52%).
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 34% · 2022 14% · 2023 21%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
62% of The Impact Fund’s revenue is contributions — about as donation-reliant as the typical peer (72% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 5 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.
Board chair
Robert Schug
Board Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 8 funders to 12 funders, grant income rose $134k → $216k.
15 of 34 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 70% 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 Impact Fund’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 34 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
The Impact Fund leans on a few funders — its largest provides 38% of grant income and the top three 72%; half comes from just 2 funders.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 2 funders to its left
78% 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 The Impact Fund.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 36% · 2018 87% · 2019 56% · 2020 57% · 2021 69% · 2022 38% · 2023 51% — 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
42% of The Impact Fund's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 44% 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
70% of The Impact Fund'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 $1.2M that is directly attributable, 76% of it comes from California funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $2.8M arriving through sponsors registered in 8 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
The Impact Fund has grown faster than three-quarters of the 369 unclassified nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 369 unclassified nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2025
Organizations like The Impact Fund
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
82% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
88%
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 The Impact Fund: 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 The Impact Fund?
- The Impact Fund (California) receives grants from 34 organizations whose IRS filings report $3,956,421 to it, the largest being BNY MELLON CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($1,500,000). 15 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 70% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does The Impact Fund have?
- IRS filings report 34 organizations giving $3,956,421 in grants to The Impact Fund, 15 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of The Impact Fund?
- BNY MELLON CHARITABLE GIFT FUND is the largest funder on record, with $1,500,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like The Impact Fund 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 34 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