California · Nonprofit
THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION
THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION (California) receives grants from 37 organizations whose IRS filings report $6,433,456 to it, the largest being Silicon Valley Community Foundation ($1,553,432). 24 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
- $1.4M
- Funders on record
- 37
- Grants received
- $6.4M
- Net assets
- $954k
What The Pollination Project Foundation does
Mission
The Pollination Project Foundation (tpp) provides catalytic seed funding to expert volunteers driving grassroots, community-led change around the world. Grounded in heartivism - the practice of pairing compassion with action - tpp funds leaders in more than 120 countries working across education, climate and environmental protection, women and girls' empowerment, disaster response, and animal protection. Our core thesis is simple and proven: expert volunteers plus modest capital equals outsized, durable impact. Tpp exists to ensure that people closest to the challenges they seek to solve are trusted, resourced, and supported to lead.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
On its FY2024 return the organization reported starting a significant new program and a significant change in how it conducts a program.
During the fiscal year the organization introduced the ai innovation & operational infrastructure program. The program is described in form 990, part iii, line 4c.
Its own explanation, from Schedule O of that return (Part III, line 2).
During the fiscal year the organization ceased conducting the philanthropy program. Believing that real change is built upon a solid foundation, we invest in individual grassroots changemakers developing sustainable solutions to societal problems. This approach is not only more equitable, it's more powerful as it allows individuals with a deep understanding of their communities to elevate the voices of diverse and marginalized people who are often overlooked.
Its own explanation, from Schedule O of that return (Part III, line 3).
Grantmaking: the pollination project's core daily grant program provides catalytic seed grants to expert volunteer-led, community-driven initiatives around the world - grounded in heartivism, the practice of pairing compassion with action. Tpp exists on the conviction that the people closest to a problem are best positioned to solve it, and that trust, empathy, and lived experience belong at the center of how change happens. During fiscal year 2024-2025, tpp awarded 366 grants totaling over $507,000 across six continents and 55 countries, including significant foreign grants. Grants ranging from $500 to $10,000 fund initiatives across four impact areas: planetary & human health, animal protection, equity & dignity, and community development & education. Funding decisions are guided by a globally distributed network of 80+ volunteer grant advisors - many of them former grantees themselves - who bring local knowledge, sector expertise, and the wisdom of lived experience to every decision. A typical grant mobilizes 200 hours of volunteer time, with one in four grantees contributing 500 or more volunteer hours. In total, grantees and their communities contributed nearly 80,000…
$629,467 spentof which $333,500 as grants59% of program spendingGlobal farm animal protection (animal rights): the pollination project has become a catalytic backbone for the farmed animal protection movement, with deep investments in mexico and brazil producing measurable legislative, legal, and cultural wins. In mexico, tpp helped build codam - a coalition now uniting 350+ organizations, including 11 state-level grantees - and supported legislative reforms including a state constitutional amendment recognizing animals as sentient beings in baja california and the creation of a specialized animal welfare commission in veracruz. In brazil, tpp supported groundbreaking legal work through gaia libertas, brazil's first legal ngo for farmed animals, filing pioneering lawsuits on chick grinding, confinement, and live exports. The national movement to end live animal exports, sparked by a campaign tpp supported, has since united 600+ people and 100+ organizations across 27 cities. Tpp also co-created a national food system strategy in brazil, funding 25 community-led projects in just nine months spanning urban agriculture, plant-based culinary education, climate policy advocacy, and community kitchen transformation. Beyond grantmaking, tpp launched…
$384,314 spentof which $238,485 as grants36% of program spendingAi innovation & operational infrastructure: with a tech entrepreneur at our helm, the pollination project is investing in artificial intelligence both as a tool for social good and as a means of maximizing organizational efficiency - ensuring that human capacity is directed where it matters most. In july 2025, tpp incubated murmuration labs in partnership with servicespace and tianren culture - an ai lab that puts heart intelligence first. Building on awakin ai's pioneering work, murmuration labs has helped 50+ wisdom keepers and changemakers develop custom ai tools that have sparked tens of thousands of meaningful conversations worldwide. Murmuration labs is now designing circle agent, an ai assistant that facilitates transformative small-group gatherings both online and in-person. Internally, tpp is automating systems and workflows across grantmaking operations - from application processing to report analytics - so that the organization can respond to growing demand (3,800 applications this year) without sacrificing the human judgment and relational depth that make tpp's model work. This dual investment in external ai for good and internal ai for efficiency reflects tpp's…
$46,380 spent4% of program spending
The 3 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $1,060,161.
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 2021 to 2022, from $2.5M to $1.8M (−28%).
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% · 2022 5%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
99% of THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (81% 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.
Chief executive
Alexis Fox
Executive director
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
The chief executive listed changed between the FY2023 and FY2024 filings.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 9 funders to 13 funders, grant income fell $849k → $843k.
13 of 37 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 THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 37 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 POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 24% 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
75% 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 POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 69% · 2018 46% · 2019 37% · 2020 32% · 2021 35% · 2022 65% · 2023 46% — 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
30% of THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 65% 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 THE POLLINATION PROJECT 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 $2.1M that is directly attributable, 79% of it comes from California funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $4.3M 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
THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION holds deeper cash reserves than three-quarters of the 6,891 human services nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 6,891 human services nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2025
Organizations like THE POLLINATION PROJECT 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
80% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
84%
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 POLLINATION PROJECT 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 THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION?
- THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION (California) receives grants from 37 organizations whose IRS filings report $6,433,456 to it, the largest being Silicon Valley Community Foundation ($1,553,432). 24 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 THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION have?
- IRS filings report 37 organizations giving $6,433,456 in grants to THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION, 24 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of THE POLLINATION PROJECT FOUNDATION?
- Silicon Valley Community Foundation is the largest funder on record, with $1,553,432 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like THE POLLINATION PROJECT 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 37 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