· Private foundation
Better Way 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k11 grants · $55k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $270k
- $50k–250k21 grants · $2.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe | $200,000 |
| University of Notre Dame | $185,000 |
| Lower Sioux Indian Community | $160,000 |
| Oceti Sakowin Community Academy | $150,000 |
| Hearts Gathered | $150,000 |
| Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation | $120,000 |
| Mama's Hope Organization for Legal Assistance | $100,000 |
| Keres Children's Learning Center | $100,000 |
| Tanzania Early Childhood Development Network | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| Tanzania Home Economics Association | $100,000 |
| Red Cloud Indian School | $100,000 |
| Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee | $100,000 |
| Amani Girls Home | $100,000 |
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 US giving — 72% of grant dollars ($9.7M). The need read here covers only this US portion; the 28% that went abroad ($3.8M) is mapped below.
Your human-services grants (FY19–24, $173k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 94% 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
Beyond the US — 28% of all-years giving ($3.8M)
1 country, by the recipient’s country on the filing.
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. International giving is mapped by the recipient’s country from the same 990filings; comparable need data isn’t available at that grain.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 14% of Better Way 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.
53 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2024, 20 since wound down; 4 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $150k 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
- KCKERES CHILDREN'S LEARNING CENTER5× · 2019–2024 · $677k · revenue +112%
- TVTHUNDER VALLEY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COR5× · 2019–2024 · $632k · revenue +6%
- MAMONTESSORI AMERICAN INDIAN CHILDCARE CENTER INCORPORATED6× · 2019–2024 · $557k · revenue +144%
Funded once
TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGEgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $200k · revenue +50%- RFRESULTS FOR DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $100k · revenue +76%
- TOTOHONO O'ODHAM COMMUNITY COLLEGEgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $80k · revenue +103%
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.
Little priest tribal college is established as an educational institution by the winnebago tribe of nebraska to fulfill the goal of its namesake, chief little priest, "be strong and educate my children".
To provide higher education opportunities, at the community college level, including vocational and technical training. as a tribal community college, we emphasize the teaching and learning of dakota culture and language toward the…
The lac courte oreilles ojibwe university mission is to provide anishinaabe communities with post-secondary and continuing education while advancing the language, culture, and history of the ojibwe. in carrying out the mission, the lac…
To build academic achievement and foster healthy development of the whole child in an intertribal environment.
Turtle mountain community college is committed to functioning as an autonomous indian controlled college on the turtle mountain chippewa reservation focusing on general studies, undergraduate education, career & technical education,…
To provide postsecondary educational opportunities to meet the academic, vocational, and cultural needs of native american communities in the northwest and to provide education programs in order to promote indigenous self-determination and…
To provide education and instruction in the scholarly study and preservation of indian art to empower creativity and leadership in native arts and cultures through higher education, life-long learning and outreach.
Dynamic Salish language revitalization powering cultural renewal and building a stronger, healthier community.
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.
White earth tribal and community college, an anishinaabe controlled liberal arts institution of higher education, is dedicated to educational excellence through provision of culturally relevant curriculum, in partnership with students,…
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities accredits institutions of higher education by applying evidence-informed standards and processes to support continuous improvements and promote equitable student achievement and success.
The intertribal agriculture council was founded in 1987 to pursue and promote the conservation, development and use of our agricultural resources of american indian and alaska native tribes.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Northwest Indian College Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Farm to Family Fund. 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 31 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) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 5% 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.
56 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. 56 of the 89 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 University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds KERES CHILDREN'S LEARNING CENTER ↗
- Who funds THUNDER VALLEY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COR ↗
- Who funds MONTESSORI AMERICAN INDIAN CHILDCARE CENTER INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Hearts Gathered ↗
- Who funds Comanche Language and Cultural Preservation Committee ↗
- Who funds ST CATHERINE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NACA-INSPIRED SCHOOLS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Oceti Sakowin Community Academy ↗
- Who funds LITTLE EARTH RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF BOSTON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds OGLALA LAKOTA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL NATIVE AMERICAN BOARDING SC ↗
- Who funds RESULTS FOR DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds TOHONO O'ODHAM COMMUNITY COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds TeamLift Inc ↗
- Who funds Saad K'idilye' ↗
- Who funds Sicangu Community Development Corporation ↗
- Who funds SAINT CLARE'S TAHOE A MOUNTAIN MONTESSORI SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds AIM HIGHER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAINT PAUL & MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
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 Nations Development Institute · Northwest Area Foundation · Common Counsel Foundation · Ndn Collective Inc · Novo Foundation · The Minneapolis Foundation · Opus Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · WK Kellogg Foundation · Newman's Own Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Vadon 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 Better Way 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.
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- University of Portland — 1% 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.