Seti Institute
Mountain View, CA · EIN 94-2951356. Reported 132 grants totalling $9,618,045 to 56 organizations across tax years 2020-2023, 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. 56 distinct organizations, with 15% 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. 76% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 3 year-to-year transitions. That is well above the 57% median for grantmaking charities, and above the 67% private foundations manage. This list is close to settled, so a newcomer has to displace someone rather than fill a gap.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $41,113. Half of what it reported fell between $23,275 and $86,112; 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 | $1,419,261 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| Trillium Technologies Inc | Chicago, IL | $1,158,835 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Wested | Seal Beach, CA | $725,558 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| University of Washington | Chicago, IL | $465,560 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| University of Massachusetts - Amherst | Hadley, MA | $349,721 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| 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 |
| Other Orb LLC | Flagstaff, AZ | $292,320 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Regents of the University of California at Riverside | Riverside, CA | $284,861 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| University of Florida | Gainesville, FL | $282,205 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| Univ of Hawaii | Honolulu, HI | $262,232 | 3 | 3 | 2022 |
| Planetary Science Institute | Tucson, AZ | $245,580 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| San Diego State University Foundation | San Diego, CA | $219,604 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| Leiden Measurement Technology | Sunnyvale, CA | $197,263 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Baja Technology LLC | Tempe, AZ | $188,320 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| Trustees of Purdue University | West Lafayette, IN | $183,048 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Regents of the University of Michigan | Ann Arbor, MI | $176,827 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Smithsonian Institute | Washington, DC | $168,835 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Astronomical Society of the Pacific | San Francisco, CA | $160,048 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Board of Regents of Univ of Wisconsin System | Milwaukee, WI | $141,457 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory LLC | Laurel, MD | $126,583 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Million Concepts LLC | Louisville, KY | $125,889 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Georgetown University | Washington, DC | $120,967 | 3 | 3 | 2022 |
| Southwest Research Institute | San Antonio, TX | $107,619 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| University of Texas at Arlington | Arlington, TX | $101,478 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Cornell University | Ithaca, NY | $92,023 | 1 | 1 | 2020 |
| University of Oklahoma | Norman, OK | $90,525 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| Research Foundation for the State University of New York | Albany, NY | $86,453 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| University of Southern California | Los Angeles, CA | $82,073 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| S&b Precision Machines Consulting LLC | Vista, CA | $78,200 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Metzger Geoscience Consulting LLC | Reno, NV | $76,400 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Universities Space Research Association | Washington, DC | $71,123 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Association of Universities for | Tucson, AZ | $70,945 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Oak Crest Institute of Science | Monrovia, CA | $67,007 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Aries Scientific | Silver Spring, MD | $64,919 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia | Charlottesvle, VA | $60,958 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine | Philadelphia, PA | $58,430 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| 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 |
| Cal Poly Pomona Foundation Inc | Pomona, CA | $40,828 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| Space Science Institute | Boulder, CO | $8,232 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
41 of 56 (73%) 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 kind of organizations it funds
By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 22 of 56 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 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 |
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 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 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
- 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 $41,113 -- 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.
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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 4 returns (tax years 2020-2023). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.
On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 22 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 7 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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