Seti Institute
Mountain View, CA · EIN 94-2951356. Reported 161 grants totalling $11.7M to 62 organizations across tax years 2020-2024, 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:
- What kind of organization it is. For Seti Institute, the IRS classifies it under science & technology rather than as a grantmaker (NTEE U310) -- it is an operating charity that also makes grants.
- How spread out its giving is. 62 distinct organizations, with 12% 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.
- How much its list changes. 74% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 4 year-to-year transitions. That is well above the 56% median for grantmaking charities, and above the 67% median for private foundations. It describes the organizations it already funds, not whether it would consider a new one.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $40,828. Half of what it reported fell between $23,053 and $86,578; the smallest was $5,760 and the largest $917,954. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.
Every organization it funded
This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.
| Organization | Location | Total received | Grants | Years funded | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Honeybee Robotics Ltd | Brooklyn, NY | $1,427,829 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| Trillium Technologies Inc | Chicago, IL | $1,158,835 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Wested | Seal Beach, CA | $900,990 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| University of Washington | Chicago, IL | $497,940 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| Planetary Science Institute | Tucson, AZ | $433,422 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| University of Massachusetts - Amherst | Hadley, MA | $427,964 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| Baja Technology LLC | Tempe, AZ | $384,820 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| University of Florida | Gainesville, FL | $379,565 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| San Diego State University Foundation | San Diego, CA | $378,780 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| Other Orb LLC | Flagstaff, AZ | $376,320 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Regents of the University of California at Riverside | Riverside, CA | $371,306 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| Girl Scouts of the United States of America | New York, NY | $338,015 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| The University of Arizona | Tucson, AZ | $331,584 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| Trustees of Purdue University | West Lafayette, IN | $315,724 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Southwest Research Institute | San Antonio, TX | $279,683 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| Univ of Hawaii | Honolulu, HI | $262,232 | 3 | 3 | 2022 |
| Leiden Measurement Technology | Sunnyvale, CA | $235,275 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Regents of the University of Michigan | Ann Arbor, MI | $193,832 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Smithsonian Institute | Washington, DC | $168,835 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Astronomical Society of the Pacific | San Francisco, CA | $160,048 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory LLC | Laurel, MD | $155,881 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Chabot Space & Science Center Foundation | Oakland, CA | $149,135 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Cornell University | Ithaca, NY | $142,023 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Board of Regents of Univ of Wisconsin System | Milwaukee, WI | $141,457 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Million Concepts LLC | Louisville, KY | $125,889 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| University of Oklahoma | Norman, OK | $121,411 | 5 | 5 | 2024 |
| Georgetown University | Washington, DC | $120,967 | 3 | 3 | 2022 |
| California Academy of Sciences | San Francisco, CA | $111,303 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| University of Texas at Arlington | Arlington, TX | $101,478 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Research Foundation for the State University of New York | Albany, NY | $86,453 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine | Philadelphia, PA | $83,816 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| University of Southern California | Los Angeles, CA | $82,073 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Association of Universities for | Washington, DC | $79,625 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| S&b Precision Machines Consulting LLC | Vista, CA | $78,200 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Universities Space Research Association | Washington, DC | $77,552 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Metzger Geoscience Consulting LLC | Reno, NV | $76,400 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia | Charlottesvle, VA | $69,710 | 4 | 4 | 2024 |
| Oak Crest Institute of Science | Monrovia, CA | $67,007 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Aries Scientific | Silver Spring, MD | $64,919 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Cal Poly Pomona Foundation Inc | Pomona, CA | $61,528 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Bay Area Environmental Research Institute | Moffett Field, CA | $57,223 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Howard University | Washington, DC | $54,187 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Fibernetics LLC | Litit, PA | $49,482 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| University of Maryland Baltimore | Baltimore, MD | $49,375 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Villanova University | Villanova, PA | $42,170 | 3 | 3 | 2022 |
| Citrus College Foundation | Glendora, CA | $34,676 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Trustees of Boston University | Boston, MA | $30,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| University of Georgia Research | Athens, GA | $29,093 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Girl Scouts of Northern California | Alameda, CA | $27,910 | 1 | 1 | 2020 |
| Arizona State University | Tempe, AZ | $26,565 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| University of Central Florida Board of Trustees | Orlando, FL | $25,309 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| James Madison University | Harrisonburg, VA | $25,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Lockheed Martin Corporation Lm Space Systems Company | Pasadena, CA | $24,675 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Noqsi Aerospace Ltd | Pine, CO | $23,275 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp | Chicago, IL | $21,885 | 1 | 1 | 2020 |
| M3D Co Roger Matar | Santa Clara, CA | $21,578 | 1 | 1 | 2020 |
| Trustees of Columbia University | New York, NY | $20,968 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Space Science Institute | Boulder, CO | $20,039 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Georgia Tech Research Corporation | Atlanta, GA | $16,654 | 1 | 1 | 2020 |
| The University of Tennessee | Knoxville, TN | $12,219 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Regents of the University of California at Berkeley | Riverside, CA | $11,547 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| New Mexico State University | Las Cruces, NM | $8,469 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
44 of 62 (71%) received money in more than one year over the 5 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 kind of organizations it funds
By the activity category the IRS assigns each recipient, for the 25 of 62 recipients we could match to a registered organization. The categories are the IRS's, not ours -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.
Giving by year
| Tax year | Grants reported | Total | Median grant |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 36 | $2,855,300 | $41,663 |
| 2021 | 38 | $2,764,263 | $39,344 |
| 2022 | 29 | $2,033,233 | $41,399 |
| 2023 | 29 | $1,965,249 | $43,138 |
| 2024 | 29 | $2,034,080 | $38,012 |
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
24% of its giving went to organizations in California. 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.
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Funders that support the same organizations
These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are a sign of overlapping priorities and nothing more: they do not show that any of these funders would consider a new organization. Each page says what its filings show.
How to approach this grantmaker
- 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.
- Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $40,828 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
- Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in California.
- 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 Seti Institute's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 5 returns (tax years 2020-2024). Grant figures are from its returns. Recipient classifications, the concentration and retention figures and the funders that support the same organizations are our own calculations from them, described in how we build this.
On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 24 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 5 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: 339 Bernardo Avenue 200, Mountain View, CA, 94043.
EIN 94-2951356 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this
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