· Private foundation
Ajax Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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–50k13 grants · $265k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $125k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Tumbleweeds | $75,000 |
| Caltech Associates | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| Red Lodge Fire Rescue Foundation | $25,000 |
| Boys Girls Club of Red Lodge | $25,000 |
| CLDI | $25,000 |
| Boys Girls Club of Billings | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| Montana Rescue Mission | $25,000 |
| Vogel Alcove | $25,000 |
| Red Lodge Area Community Foundation | $25,000 |
| Billings Preserv Soc Endow Trust | $10,000 |
| American Whitewater | $10,000 |
| Northfield Mount Hermon School | $10,000 |
| Ecuadorian Rivers Institute | $10,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $30k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Ajax Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
9 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 5 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, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $110k 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
- CACaltech Associates4× · 2021–2024 · $150k
- TTumbleweeds4× · 2020–2024 · $95k
- IGIndividual grant recipient4× · 2020–2024 · $45k
Funded once
- DIDOG IS MY COPILOTone grant, 2021 · $50k · revenue +14%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $30k
- SASalvation Army King Countyone grant, 2020 · $20k
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 greatfully steward the land and singing waters with respect and care. To build a beloved community that values justice, equality, and love.
The mission of the montana wilderness school is to provide empowering expeditionary wilderness courses to youth that foster personal growth and cultivate a conservation ethic through connecting with remote landscapes and wild places.
Wildlife and natural ecosystems to safeguard biological diversity for current and future generations.
To promote science-based wildlife management that fosters ecosystem health and dynamic equilibrium between species throughout the state of wyoming.
The mission of the montana land reliance (mlr) is to partner with landowners to provide permanent protection for private lands that are significant for agricultural production, fish and wildlife habitat, and open space.
The bob marshall wilderness foundation bmwf has been serving the wilderness recreation community for over twenty 20 years by organizing and leading projects that clear trails and preserve the wilderness ecosystem by restoring damaged areas…
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.
To conserve, protect and restore montana's coldwater fisheries and watersheds.
As the community's official destination management and marketing organization, visit big sky leads the development and promotion of authentic tourism experiences through research and stakeholder collaboration to grow big sky's economy…
The mission of jmr is to perform humanitarian search, rescue, and recovery services in any climactic condition and in any situation compatible with team capabilities; promotes wilderness safety and accident prevention to the general…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Grand Teton Music Festival Inc and the most unlike its peers is Dog Is My Copilot. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 32 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 RED LODGE AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DOG IS MY COPILOT ↗
- Who funds RED LODGE FIRE RESCUE FOUNDATION a Montana Nonprofit Public Benefit Corp ↗
- Who funds VOGEL ALCOVE ↗
- Who funds MONTANA RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Ecuadorian Rivers Institute ↗
- Who funds American Whitewater ↗
- Who funds Billings Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds A Noise Within ↗
- Who funds NORTHFIELD MOUNT HERMON SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds FRANCISCAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE RIVER PARKS ASSOCIATION ↗
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: First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Montana Community Foundation Inc · Treacy Foundation · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Ajax Foundation 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.
- American Whitewater — 5% of income from government
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.