· Public charity
American Trails
To advance the development of diverse high quality trails and greenways for the benefit of people and communities through collaboration, education and communication to raise awareness of the value these trails offer.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2022–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 36 grants below total $1,062,339 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,092,013 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $29,674 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $59k
- $10k–50k20 grants · $406k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $597k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WOOD RIVER TRAILS COALITION | $101,993 |
| COTTONWOOD CANYONS FOUNDATION | $95,290 |
| TREAD LIGHTLY INC | $74,643 |
| SEEDS ECOLOGY AND EDUCATION CENTERS | $74,618 |
| PARTNERSHIP FOR YOUTH INC DBA AMERICORPS ST LOUIS | $69,700 |
| WESTERN STATES ENDURANCE RUN FOUNDATION | $68,300 |
| BACK COUNTRY HORSEMEN OF WASHINGTON | $58,176 |
| WESTERN STATES TRAIL FOUNDATION | $54,627 |
| THE WATERSHED RESEARCH AND TRAINING CENTER | $49,632 |
| COLORADO FOURTEENERS INITIATIVE | $41,960 |
| AMERICAN HIKING SOCIETY | $31,549 |
| SELWAY BITTERROOT FRANK CHURCH FOUNDATION | $29,371 |
| SUPERIOR WATERSHED PARTNERSHIP | $29,101 |
| MOUNTAINS TO SOUND GREENWAY TRUST | $27,217 |
| BACK COUNTRY HORSEMEN OF VIRGINIA HIGHLANDS | $24,701 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY22–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 68% of your 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.
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.
8 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 28 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, 20% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $850k 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
- BCBACK COUNTRY HORSEMEN OF WASHINGTON2× · 2023–2024 · $100k · revenue +13%
- WAWILD ALABAMA INC3× · 2022–2024 · $77k · revenue +55%
- SWSUPERIOR WATERSHED PARTNERSHIP2× · 2023–2024 · $54k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- MCMONTANA CONSERVATION CORPS INCone grant, 2023 · $56k · revenue +12%
- WTWASHINGTON TRAILS ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $20k · revenue +29%
- HOHEART OF OREGON CORPS INCone grant, 2023 · $17k · revenue -11%
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.
The pacific crest trail association's mission is to advocate for the pacific crest trail as an inspirational outdoor experience, to connect people to the pct, and to conserve the trail.
Promoting Responsible Recreation and Environmental Stewardship
Trail maintenance
To provide, improve, and maintain, through voluntary public involvement and in cooperation with the USDA Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, a linear, non-motorized, sustainable, scenic, recreation trail corridor for hikers,…
Trails Utah is dedicated to trails advocacy, planning, funding, and construction in needed areas throughout the state.
Enhancement and development of trails on public lands in Beaverhead County
Gunnison Trails is a non-profit trail advocacy organization established to assist land managers and other organizations in maintaining existing trails, educating users on responsible trail-based recreation, and pursuing opportunities for…
Poudre Wilderness Volunteers (PWV) is a Larimer County, Colorado, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1996. The mission of PWV is to assist the Canyon Lakes Ranger District of the United States Forest Service in managing and…
At Yosemite Rivers Alliance, we unite conservation and community to protect and restore the three rivers that ?ow through the Yosemite Regionthe Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Merced.
Maintain Trails for US Forest Service
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Country Trail Association Incorporated and the most unlike its peers is Wozu Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 27 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
51 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. 51 of the 53 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 WOOD RIVER TRAILS COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds BACK COUNTRY HORSEMEN OF WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds COTTONWOOD CANYONS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WILD ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds TREAD LIGHTLY INC ↗
- Who funds SEEDS ↗
- Who funds BACK COUNTRY HORSEMEN OF THE VIRGINIA HIGHLANDS ↗
- Who funds PARTNERSHIP FOR YOUTH ↗
- Who funds Western States Endurance Run Foundation ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN HIKING SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds MONTANA CONSERVATION CORPS INC ↗
- Who funds WESTERN STATES TRAIL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SUPERIOR WATERSHED PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds THE WATERSHED RESEARCH & TRAINING CENTER ↗
- Who funds COLORADO FOURTEENERS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds SELWAY-BITTERROOT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust ↗
- Who funds Idaho Trails Association ↗
- Who funds PULASKI USERS GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON TRAILS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NEW MEXICO WILDERNESS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds Tahoe Rim Trail Association ↗
- Who funds HEART OF OREGON CORPS INC ↗
- Who funds New York-New Jersey Trail Conference Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTH COUNTRY TRAIL ASSOCIATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Mountain Bike the Tetons Inc ↗
- Who funds PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND STEWARDSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Scarborough Land Conservation Trust ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF PATHWAYS ↗
- Who funds Carolina Mountain Club Incorporated ↗
- Who funds YEAR ONE INC ↗
- Who funds Friends of the Dillon Ranger District ↗
- Who funds ECO SERVANTS ↗
- Who funds SAWTOOTH SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds The Trail Conservancy ↗
- Who funds WORLD TRAILS NETWORK - HUB FOR THE AMERICAS ↗
- Who funds REDWOOD PARKS CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THREE RIVERS LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds WOZU INC ↗
- Who funds THE ACCESS FUND ↗
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: National Forest Foundation · National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance · Patagoniaorg · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · National Park Foundation · The Nature Conservancy · Resources Legacy Fund · Ibm International Foundation · Partnership for the National Trails System Inc · National Park Trust Inc · River Network · Ge Aerospace Foundation
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 American Trails 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.
- Heart of Oregon Corps Inc — 28% of income from government
- American Hiking Society — 14% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to American Trails?
Find your warmest path to American Trails 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.