· Private foundation
Bitterroot Fund
Its FY2025 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $33k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $180k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $85k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RANDOM ACTS OF SILLINESS | $85,000 |
| READ MONTANA | $30,000 |
| THE SHANE LALANI CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $25,000 |
| GALLATIN VALLEY LAND TRUST | $20,000 |
| VERGE THEATER | $20,000 |
| OPERA MONTANA | $15,000 |
| BRIDGERCARE | $15,000 |
| ONE VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| COMMUNITY HEALTH PARTNERS | $15,000 |
| CASAGAL OF GALLATIN COUNTY | $15,000 |
| HEART OF THE VALLEY ANIMAL SHELTER | $10,000 |
| HELP CENTER INC | $5,000 |
| ROOTS FAMILY COLLABORATIVE | $5,000 |
| BOZEMAN ART MUSEUM | $5,000 |
| BEFRIENDERS INC | $5,000 |
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 (FY22–25, $50k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, 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 +27% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down; 6 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $48k 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
- RARANDOM ACTS OF SILLINESS4× · 2022–2025 · $227k · revenue +55% · 29% of their budget
- GVGALLATIN VALLEY LAND TRUST5× · 2021–2025 · $120k · revenue +74%
- RREADMontana3× · 2023–2025 · $80k · revenue +73%
Funded once
- MIMONTANA INTERMOUNTAIN OPERAone grant, 2024 · $15k
- MHMontana Health Professionals for a Healthly Climateone grant, 2023 · $10k
- BMBLUE MOUNTAIN CLINIC INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +39%
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.
Montana center for the arts purpose is to nurture, promote and expand cultural engagement and opportunity in our region. through collaboration with the community at large, and in partnership with the area's diverse cultural and educational…
Promote research and actions to save wildlife.
Our mission is to provide visitors with an engaging, recreational, and educational experience, while ensuring exceptional care for our animal and plant collections and supporting responsible propagation programs for species in need.
To greatfully steward the land and singing waters with respect and care. To build a beloved community that values justice, equality, and love.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Gallatin Valley Land Trust and the most unlike its peers is Tinworks Art. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
22 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. 22 of the 30 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 RANDOM ACTS OF SILLINESS ↗
- Who funds GALLATIN VALLEY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds READMontana ↗
- Who funds ONE VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Shane Lalani Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds HELP CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HEART OF THE VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds BRIDGERCARE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HEALTH PARTNERS INC ↗
- Who funds OPERA MONTANA ↗
- Who funds Childrens Museum of Bozeman Inc ↗
- Who funds Montana Health Professionals for a Healthly Climate ↗
- Who funds BLUE MOUNTAIN CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds ROOTS FAMILY COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds Gallatin Valley Farm to School ↗
- Who funds MONTANA CASAGAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BOZEMAN ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds TINWORKS ART ↗
- Who funds MOUNTAIN TIME ARTS ↗
- Who funds MT MOUNTAIN MAMAS ↗
- Who funds Befrienders ↗
- Who funds BOZEMAN YOUTH CYCLING ↗
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 Arthur M Blank Family Foundation · One Valley Community Foundation · Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation · Bozeman Deaconess Health Services · The Rieschel Foundation · Montana Community Foundation Inc · First Security Bank Foundation · Gilhousen Family Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Yellowstone Club Community Foundation · Cross Charitable Foundation Attn John R Clark · Treacy 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 Bitterroot Fund 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 Bitterroot Fund?
Find your warmest path to Bitterroot Fund 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.