Recent years have witnessed not only the growth of charter schools, but also a surge of philanthropies acting as institutional entrepreneurs who offer both funding and legitimacy. And yet, over a short period of time, foundations' once diffuse giving has become increasingly concentrated. In order to explain these changing dynamics of philanthropic giving we utilize a recursive analysis of network and institutional evolution of funding ties among philanthropies to California charter schools over a period of 9 years, from 2003 to 2012. By mapping the changing network configurations, we test multiple relational hypotheses against each other to explain the growth and consolidation of giving and in doing so show how the relational logics of funding shift over time.