· Private foundation
Bertha Russ Lytel Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k6 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $227k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $198k
- $250k+1 grant · $303k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $303,100 |
| FERNDALE COM CHURCHSENI | $197,610 |
| CAL STATE UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| OUR SAVIOR'S LUTHERAN CHURCH | $30,000 |
| HOSPICE OF HUMBOLDT | $25,000 |
| FERNDALE MUSEUM | $25,000 |
| CAL-POLY UNIVERSITY | $22,500 |
| FERNDALE CEMETERY ASSOCIATION | $20,000 |
| CITY OF FERNDALE | $15,115 |
| ROTARY CLUB OF FERNDALE | $13,000 |
| NOEL FOR NEIGHBORS | $13,000 |
| LOST COAST CAMP | $13,000 |
| HUMBOLDT COUNTY FAIR | $10,000 |
| FERNDALE COMMUNITY CHEST | $7,500 |
| VFW | $7,157 |
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 (FY17–25, $218k) land where the poverty rate runs at 18%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 +22% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
27 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $42k 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
- FMFERNDALE MUSEUM INC8× · 2017–2025 · $230k · revenue +27% · 33% of their budget
- HOHOSPICE OF HUMBOLDT INC3× · 2023–2025 · $150k · revenue +22%
- LCLost Coast Camp8× · 2017–2025 · $113k · revenue +310%
Funded once
- SJST JOSEPH'S HOSPITAL OF TAMPA FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue +958%
- ODOPEN DOOR COMMUNITY HEALTHone grant, 2017 · $100k
- SRSENIOR RESOURCE CENTERone grant, 2020 · $100k
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.
Historical preservation
The Pacific County Historical Society & Museum Foundation was formed to create a museum displaying antiques and memorabilia which presents the heritage of Pacific County. The organization promotes tourism in the County and provides…
The ferndale food bank is a local food bank that distrbutes food to community members in need of assistance.
The friends of glendale exist soley for the care and maintenance of the historic glendale cemetery.
Museum
Fire and rescue service
Provide perpetual care for heidelberg cememetery
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Humboldt County Fair Association and the most unlike its peers is Fern Cottage Foundation. 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 30 years old; the field is 23. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% 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 10% 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.
18 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. 18 of the 57 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 FERNDALE MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds LD O'ROURKE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF HUMBOLDT INC ↗
- Who funds Ferndale Repertory Theatre ↗
- Who funds Lost Coast Camp ↗
- Who funds ST JOSEPH'S HOSPITAL OF TAMPA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Humboldt County Fair Association ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR PEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds FERNDALE CEMETERY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds FERNDALE COMMUNITY CHEST ↗
- Who funds FERN COTTAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLARKE HISTORICAL MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Humboldt Historical Society DBA Humboldt County Historical Society ↗
- Who funds MCKINLEYVILLE SENIOR CENTER ↗
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: Christine & Jalmer Berg Foundation · Humboldt Area Foundation · Amazonsmile 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 Bertha Russ Lytel 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.
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 Bertha Russ Lytel Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Bertha Russ Lytel Foundation 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.