Grantmakers › California

Common Counsel Foundation

Oakland, CA · EIN 94-3214166. Reported 1,936 grants totalling $186.3M to 865 organizations across tax years 2021-2024, on Form 990 Schedule I.

Does this grantmaker accept applications?

Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.

Three things in the filing do bear on it:

1. What kind of organization it is. For Common Counsel Foundation, the IRS classifies it under community improvement rather than as a grantmaker (NTEE S50) -- it is an operating charity that also makes grants.
2. How spread out its giving is. 865 distinct organizations, with 20% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is genuinely spread out -- the mark of a funder making many independent decisions rather than underwriting one institution.
3. How much its list changes. 56% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 3 year-to-year transitions. That is about the 57% median for grantmaking charities -- noticeably lower than the 67% private foundations manage. Organizations like this one rotate more of their list each year, which is where an opening for a newcomer tends to be.

How big are its grants?

The median reported grant is $30,000. Half of what it reported fell between $20,000 and $50,000; the smallest was $5,190 and the largest $37.2M. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.

Every organization it funded

All 865 recipients appear in its filings; the 250 largest are listed here. Years funded is the number of separate tax years in which the organization received money -- the clearest signal of who this grantmaker actually has a relationship with.

437 of 865 (51%) received money in more than one year over the 4 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.

What the money was for

Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.

• Amalgamated Charitable Foundation $3,460,168 · 2022
  PROJECT SUPPORT TO ADVANCE ORGANIZATIONAL MISSION
• Center for Third World Organizing $3,000,000 · 2023
  PROJECT SUPPORT FOR PERSIMMON COLLECTIVE
• The Accomplis Collective Inc $2,000,000 · 2023
  PROJECT SUPPORT BLACKYARD
• Resist $1,100,000 · 2024
  NORTHEAST FARMERS OF COLOR NETWORK
• Youth-N-Action Inc $1,071,500 · 2023
  PROJECT SUPPORT FRESH GREENS MARKET
• Lighthouse Holyoke $1,000,000 · 2024
  BUILDING PURCHASE PROJECT

What kind of organizations it funds

By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 744 of 865 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.

Giving by year

Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.

Where its money goes

21% of its giving went to organizations in Maryland. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.

Down to the city

Funders that support the same organizations

These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.

How to approach this grantmaker

1. Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
2. Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $30,000 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
3. Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Maryland.
4. Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.

Related guides

Where these numbers come from

Everything above is taken from Common Counsel Foundation's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2021-2024). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.

On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 609 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 10 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.

Address of record on the latest return: 1624 Franklin Street 11TH Floor, Oakland, CA, 94612.

EIN 94-3214166 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this

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