· Private foundation
Ben B Cheney Foundation Inc
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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k84 grants · $225k
- $10k–50k41 grants · $836k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $525k
- $250k+4 grants · $1.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MULTICARE HEALTH FOUNDATIONS | $525,000 |
| TACOMA RESCUE MISSION | $500,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY TACOMAPIERCE COUNTY | $500,000 |
| PACIFIC LUTHERAN UNIVERSITY | $300,000 |
| YMCA OF PIERCE AND KITSAP COUNTIES | $100,000 |
| PENINSULA METROPOLITAN PARK DISTRICT (GREATER TACOMA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION) | $100,000 |
| GRAND CINEMA | $80,000 |
| MERCY FOUNDATION NORTH | $75,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON TACOMA | $60,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | $60,000 |
| THE CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF SOUTHERN OREGON (KID TIME CHILDREN'S MUSEUM) | $50,000 |
| GOODROOTS NORTHWEST (BONNEY LAKE FOOD BANK) | $48,065 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION OPERATING AT MEDFORD OREGON | $43,000 |
| PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE | $40,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF SOUTH PUGET SOUND | $35,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 15% 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 8% of Ben B Cheney Foundation Inc’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, 96% of the giving stays in WA; read by stated purpose it is 76% — 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 +12% for the ones you funded once.
65 repeat relationships — 50 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 50 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, 59% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.4M 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
- MFMULTICARE FOUNDATIONS4× · 2021–2024 · $2.2M · revenue +59%
- TRTHE RESCUE MISSION4× · 2021–2024 · $635k · revenue +72%
- YMYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF PIERCE AND KITSAP COUNTIES4× · 2021–2024 · $626k · revenue +145%
Funded once
- SSEEone grant, 2020 · $3.1M
- UWUNITED WAY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIAone grant, 2021 · $250k · revenue +6%
- YOYMCA OF PIERCE AND KITSAP COUNTYone grant, 2021 · $200k
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.
Preserve in perpetuity the natural habitats, rural landscapes, and open spaces of the great peninsula of washington's puget sound.
United way of snohomish county improves lives for families in snohomish county by bringing people, resources, and strategy together.
Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences educates and trains health care professionals emphasizing service among rural and medically under-served communities throughout the Northwest.
To grow a lasting culture of generosity and well-being in the South Puget Sound through connection, leadership, and investment.
Acting as a catalyst, connector, and knowledge facilitator to build racially equitable, accessible, inclusive pierce county where all people can shape and activate the systems that affect our communities, now and for generations to come.
We take a joyful, community-oriented approach to raising engaged citizens, deep learners, and brave adventurers with the skills, creativity, and heart needed to better the world.
Creating access, excellence and success for the peninsula college community by providing funds for students and programs.
Strengthening the community by providing accessible and affordable health care.
Kuow/puget sound public radio is a nonprofit organization which operates three radio stations to provide news, information, and cultural programs to the greater seattle area. our mission is to create and serve a more informed public.
Siff is a seattle-based 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit dedicated to the creation of vibrant experiences and spaces that champion film discovery and arts education.
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…
Economic and community development through sport tourism. bid to host and create major sporting events, and facility consultation and optimization.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Philanthropy Northwest and the most unlike its peers is Orting Lions Community Park. 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 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
170 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. 170 of the 275 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 MULTICARE FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds THE RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF PIERCE AND KITSAP COUNTIES ↗
- Who funds THE YOUTH MARINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TACOMAPIERCE COUNTY HABITAT FOR HUMANIT ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND ↗
- Who funds Pacific Lutheran University ↗
- Who funds EMERGENCY FOOD NETWORK OF TACOMA AND PIERCE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Greater Metro Parks Foundation dba Tacoma Parks Foundation ↗
- Who funds Goodwill of the Olympics and Rainier Region ↗
- Who funds Asia Pacific Cultural Center ↗
- Who funds GIG HARBOR PENINSULA FISH ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds ANNIE WRIGHT SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF PIERCE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SAINT MARTIN'S UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LEMAY-AMERICAS CAR MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds GREENTRIKE ↗
- Who funds SAFE STREETS CAMPAIGN ↗
- Who funds SYMPHONY TACOMA ↗
- Who funds Nourish Pierce County ↗
- Who funds GRAND TACOMA CINE CLUB DBA THE GRAND CINEMA ↗
- Who funds COMPREHENSIVE MENTAL HEALTH CENTER OF TACOMA-PIERCE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HEALTH CARE ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITIES FOR HOUSING RESOURCES AND ↗
- Who funds THE COFFEE OASIS ↗
- Who funds PIERCE COUNTY CENTER FOR DISPUTE RESOLUT ↗
- Who funds MERCY FOUNDATION NORTH ↗
- Who funds CHARLES WRIGHT ACADEMY ↗
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: Greater Tacoma Community Foundation · The Norcliffe Foundation · The Bamford Foundation · Fuchsg & M Fdn Tai · Gary E Milgard Family Foundation- Sunshine · Woodworth Family Foundation · Kilworth Florence Char Tr Fndn · Forest Foundation · The Russell Family Foundation · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · Sequoia Foundation · Names Family 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 Ben B Cheney Foundation Inc 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.
- Northwest Youth Corps — 100% of income from government
- Living Opportunities Inc — 90% of income from government
- Youth 71FIVE Ministries — 16% of income from government
- Medical Teams International — 14% of income from government
- United Way of Jackson County Inc — 11% of income from government
- Nonprofit Association of Oregon — 6% of income from government
- Pacific University — 2% of income from government
- University of Portland — 1% of income from government
- Connecticut College — 0% of income from government
- Southern Oregon Friends of Hospice — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Ben B Cheney Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Ben B Cheney Foundation Inc 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.