· Public charity
A Better Big Sky
A BETTER BIG SKY works to inform and engage montanans on issues related to public education, public lands access, voting rights, the environment, sustainable energy, women's health, tribal sovereignty, access to courts, economic justice, and human rights, primarily through the financial support of nonprofit organizations.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k1 grant · $25k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $810k
- $250k+8 grants · $6.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MONTANA VALUES ACTION FUND | $1,905,000 |
| BIG SKY 55 | $1,340,000 |
| WORK EP DBA MONTANA RURAL VOTERS | $690,000 |
| WESTERN NATIVE VOTE | $650,000 |
| ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS | $500,000 |
| WILD MONTANA ACTION FUND | $465,000 |
| MONTPIRG | $300,000 |
| MONTANA CONSERVATION VOTERS | $280,000 |
| MONTANA AFL-CIO | $215,000 |
| FORWARD MONTANA | $175,000 |
| MIDDLE FORK STRATEGIES | $150,000 |
| VOTE VET | $100,000 |
| WORKING MONTANA PAC | $95,000 |
| MONTANANS FOR PUBLIC LANDS | $75,000 |
| WESTERN ORGANIZATION OF RESOURCE CO | $25,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY24–24, $150k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +51% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 50% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.5M went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- WOWESTERN ORGANIZATION OF RESOURCE COUNCILS4× · 2020–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +114%
- MSMONTANA STATE AFL-CIO2× · 2022–2024 · $361k · revenue +85%
- MPMONTANA PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH FOUNDATION2× · 2021–2024 · $310k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- MFMONTANANS FOR LIBERTY AND JUSTICEone grant, 2022 · $600k
- PPPLANNED PARENTHOOD VOTESone grant, 2020 · $235k
- WOWESTERN ORGANIZATION OF RESOURCE COUNCILS EDUCATION PROJECTone grant, 2020 · $105k · revenue +12%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
To promote public policy solutions that provide increased access to economic opportunities, greater individual freedoms and encourage greater participation in public matters by providing research and recommendation on public policy
Working Montanans' mission is to advocate for an economy that works for working people and other critical issues.
To promote social welfare including, but not limited to, advocating for electoral reforms that give montanans more choice in candidates for elections.
The montana wildlife federation is a statewide conservation organization dedicated to protecting wildlife, wildlife habitat, and public access for outdoor recreation.
Uniting and mobilizing communities to keep montana wild.
Strengthen and support noxious weed management
The montana public interest research group (montpirg) is a student directed non-partisan organization dedicated to creating positive change by educating, organizing, mobilizing, and empowering the next generation of civic leaders.
To heighten the public's awareness of conservation districts and their activities as well as to promote soil and water conservation.
A better big sky works to inform and engage montanans on issues related to public education, public lands access, voting rights, the environment, sustainable energy, women's health, tribal sovereignty, access to courts, economic justice,…
Promotion and development of montana's construction industry.
To collectively serve as a catalyst for engagement and bonding of people to our wildlife and public lands in montana through a sense of place, education, access, research and stewardship.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Montana Conservation Voters Inc and the most unlike its peers is Catalyst Impact Montana. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
19 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 19 of the 27 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds BIG SKY FIFTY FIVE PLUS ↗
- Who funds WESTERN ORGANIZATION OF RESOURCE COUNCILS ↗
- Who funds Western Native Voice Inc ↗
- Who funds WILD MONTANA ACTION FUND ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS ↗
- Who funds MONTANA STATE AFL-CIO ↗
- Who funds MONTANA PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MONTANA CONSERVATION VOTERS INC ↗
- Who funds MIDDLE FORK STRATEGIES INC ↗
- Who funds FORWARD MT ↗
- Who funds Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana ↗
- Who funds MONTANA CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds WESTERN ORGANIZATION OF RESOURCE COUNCILS EDUCATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds VOTEVETS ACTION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CATALYST MONTANA ↗
- Who funds INDIGENOUS VOTE ↗
- Who funds America Votes ↗
- Who funds CATALYST IMPACT MONTANA ↗
- Who funds THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Sixteen Thirty Fund · America Votes · Tides Foundation · All Hands on Deck Network Inc · Western Organization of Resource Councils Education Project · Western Futures Fund Inc · New Venture Fund · North Fund · Tides Advocacy · Western Conservation Action · The High Stakes Foundation · American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization A Better Big Sky funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to A Better Big Sky?
Find your warmest path to A Better Big Sky through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.