· Private foundation
Aven Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k33 grants · $730k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $1.0M
- $250k+4 grants · $7.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRED HUTCH CANCER RESEARCH CTR | $3,249,282 |
| WHITMAN COLLEGE | $3,000,000 |
| CRISTO REY JESUIT | $500,000 |
| RYTHER CHILD CENTER | $500,000 |
| BELLEVUE SCHOOLS FOUNDATION | $245,079 |
| YEAR UP | $200,000 |
| FARESTART | $100,000 |
| WASHINGTON WOMEN IN NEED | $100,000 |
| PARTNERSHIP FOR LEARNING | $100,000 |
| AKIN | $50,000 |
| SPECIAL OLYMPICS OF WASHINGTON | $50,000 |
| VINE MAPLE PLACE | $50,000 |
| HOPELINK | $50,000 |
| RAINIER PREP | $50,000 |
| YMCA OF GREATER SEATTLE | $50,000 |
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, $1.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 5% 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.
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 25% of Aven 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. Read by recipient address, 98% of the giving stays in WA; read by stated purpose it is 70% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +20% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
52 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2024, 22 since wound down; 18 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, 54% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4.1M 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
- BOBOARD OF TRUSTEES OF WHITMAN COLLEGE4× · 2021–2024 · $6.2M · revenue +63%
- HHOPELINK4× · 2020–2024 · $400k · revenue +48%
- FLFOOD LIFELINE3× · 2020–2022 · $375k · revenue +6%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $2.0M
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $1.8M
- CNCATHOLIC NEWMAN CENTERone grant, 2022 · $1.0M
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.
School's out washington (sowa) drives positive systemic change so that all washington's children and youth, particularly those furthest from justice, have access to a robust ecosystem of high-quality expanded learning programs.
The association of washington cities builds connections between our state's diverse cities and towns, while providing our members with the support needed to thrive through delivery of data-driven education, nationally recognized pooling…
Seattle jobs initiative (sji) creates opportunities for people to support themselves and their families through living-wage careers.
Restoring hope, building futures, and strengthening our communities through programs with youth, young adults and families. we support the behavioral health of at-risk and in-crisis youth across the greater south king county area. we take…
Seattle humane promotes the human-animal bond by saving and serving pets in need, regardless of age, ability, circumstance or geography.
Disability rights washington's mission is to advance the dignity, equality, and self determination of people with disabilities. we work to pursue justice on matters related to human and legal rights.
Network services has been serving homeless families in the puget sound area since 1990, with a focus on families with children. network services aims to break the cycle of homelessness by providing assistance to families with children to…
To provide job development, job seeking skills and job placement for persons with disabilities. we are dedicated to providing outstanding quality services that result in successful community involvement and employment for persons with…
Housing connector partners with property owners and managers to lower barriers to housing and increase our region's affordable housing capacity.
United way of snohomish county improves lives for families in snohomish county by bringing people, resources, and strategy together.
The ywca is dedicated to eliminating racism and empowering women.
To support equitable access to economic opportunities for immigrants, refugees, low-income, marginalized, and underserved communities in king county and the united states.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Cares of Washington and the most unlike its peers is Maris Place. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 32 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
86 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. 86 of the 138 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 BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF WHITMAN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds YEAR UP INC ↗
- Who funds CONGREGATIONS FOR THE HOMELESS ↗
- Who funds FARESTART ↗
- Who funds BELLEVUE SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOPELINK ↗
- Who funds FOOD LIFELINE ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OVERLAKE HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Cristo Rey Jesuit Seattle High School ↗
- Who funds HAITIAN EDUCATION AND LEADERSHIP PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds Washington Women in Need ↗
- Who funds TOGETHER CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMARA ↗
- Who funds Solid Ground Washington ↗
- Who funds PARTNERSHIP FOR LEARNING ↗
- Who funds TREEHOUSE ↗
- Who funds MACALESTER COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER SEATTLE (6871) ↗
- Who funds RAINIER SCHOLARS ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF YOUTH ↗
- Who funds RAINIER PREP ↗
- Who funds VINE MAPLE PLACE ↗
- Who funds ROOTS YOUNG ADULT SHELTER ↗
- Who funds NEW BEGINNINGS ↗
- Who funds FAMILY LAW CASA OF KING COUNTY ↗
- Who funds LifeWire ↗
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: The Norcliffe Foundation · Seattle Foundation · Puget Sound Energy Foundation · United Way of King County · Medina Foundation · Moccasin Lake Foundation · Liberty Mutual Foundation Inc · Washington Federal Foundation · Lucky Seven Foundation · Windermere Foundation · Ellison Foundation · Fales Foundation Trust
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 Aven 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.
- Just Compassion of East Washington County — 4% of income from government
- Year Up Inc — 0% 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.