· Private foundation
Bowline Fund
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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Seattle Neighborhood Greenways | $175,889 |
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 (FY19–21, $331k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 24% of Bowline Fund’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, 79% of the giving stays in WA; read by stated purpose it is 75% — 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.
9 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 8 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- SNSEATTLE NEIGHBORHOOD GREENWAYS7× · 2018–2024 · $1.0M · revenue +151% · 39% of their budget
- TITIDES INC2× · 2020–2021 · $330k · revenue +13%
- SPSEATTLE PARKS FOUNDATION3× · 2017–2019 · $115k · revenue +138%
Funded once
- LILid I-5 Seattle Parks Foundationone grant, 2019 · $10k
- FSFamilybike Seattleone grant, 2017 · $5k
- MPMaris Placegraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +80%
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.
Seattle-based online publication seeking to examine and influence urban policies.
Washington Bikes works to ensure that all who ride a bicycle in Washington have safe comfortable and convenient places to ride. Organization advocates for bicyclists rights and shapes policies.
The Seattle Architecture Foundation connects people to the architecture, design, and history of Seattle. We believe the more you engage with design, the more you feel connected to your changing city. As a volunteer driven organization, we…
We Heart Seattle is an action-based, boots-on-the-ground movement that organizes trash cleanups in our public spaces and offers resources to those in need. Through our direct civic engagement we lead the way to a more compassionate and…
Founded in 2001, Spark Northwest accelerates the just transition to clean energy in the Pacific Northwest. Spark Northwest uses two primary strategies: (1) on-the-ground project consulting, focusing on communities with limited financial…
Stewardship Partners helps private landowners restore and preserve the natural landscapes of WA State. We collaborate with diverse interest groups to build bridges and find solutions that achieve mutual goals of environmental protection,…
Building a diverse grassroots movement to address the causes of climate disruption through justice-based solutions by inspiring, training and mobilizing people to act.
Washington Ethnic Studies Now WAESN is a multigenerational majority POC-led nonprofit advancing Ethnic Studies and racial justice in Washington. We center people of color build youth-centered leadership and learning and organize…
House Our Neighbors envisions a future where all people can afford to live and thrive in vibrant, cohesive, and climate resilient communities. To achieve this, we develop, advocate, and mobilize for policy to realize social housing for the…
Seattle Good Business Network connects and inspires people to buy, produce, and invest locally, so that everyone has a meaningful stake in the local economy.
Neighborhood revitalization and community economic development within the Pioneer Square district of Seattle
We are workers, united across different industries to improve our working conditions and our lives. We come together as working people to build power through education, organizing, and enforcement. We work to raise and uphold standards in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Seattle Parks Foundation and the most unlike its peers is World Bicycle Relief Nfp. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 22 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 SEATTLE NEIGHBORHOOD GREENWAYS ↗
- Who funds TIDES INC ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST IMMIGRANT RIGHTS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Sightline Institute ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST FOLKLIFE ↗
- Who funds LOW INCOME HOUSING INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Bike Works Seattle ↗
- Who funds Maris Place ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE ACTION FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds OPENPLANS INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD BICYCLE RELIEF NFP ↗
- Who funds THE RHAPSODY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds EL CENTRO DE LA RAZA ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE FOLKLORE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds 350 Seattle ↗
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: Seattle Foundation · The Norcliffe Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · The Bullitt Foundation · Lucky Seven Foundation · Impactassetsinc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Bowline 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.