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· Community foundation
CENTRAL MONTANA FOUNDATION
To receive and accept property exclusively for educational, cultural, chartiable or benevolent purposes for the benefit, health and improvement of residents of the central montana area is such a way that the quality of life in central montana shall be enhanced, working alone and with any and all other persons and organizations doing…
$11M
Granted FY2024
36
Grants
1
Communities
$3.4M
Largest
01What you fund
01
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 47% of CENTRAL MONTANA FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.
02beneath the categories
Past the labels — and the year it shifted
Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.
…and in their own words, year by year
2018
expfergus
2019
participantsambulancepoolexpcentgarfield
2020
cent
2021
fire relief
2022
poolfirefergus
2023
volunteersparticipantstownwinnettrenovationequippool
2024
town winifredequipmentwinifred stockyardstockyard improvementstripsmentalchurch
Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2024 · 36 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $53k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $302k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $959k
- $250k+6 grants · $8.5M
$30,500
Median grant
1
States reached
$67M
Total assets
Largest grants
- CENTURY COMPANIES$3,416,470
- CENTRAL MONTANA MEDICAL CENTER$2,651,360
- WINIFRED SCHOOL DISTRICT$919,534
- CARR CONSTRUCTION$626,053
- GRIFFITH CONTRACTING$593,226
- PETROLEUM COUNTY COMMUNITY CENTER$259,341
- SMITH CONSTRUCTION$225,448
- JLW ARCHITECTURE$207,768
- NB CONSTRUCTION$178,380
- CRABTREE FENCING$87,531
- PETROLEUM COUNTY$70,000
- GREYN SCALE CO$69,985
- AM ENGINEERING$64,500
- STAHLY ENGINEERING & ASSOCIATES$54,907
- AGDATA SOURCE$38,693
02The need
04
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.
show:
Your human-services grants (FY21–24, $45k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12% — the area typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your edge
repeat funding
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.
70%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$20M · 44 repeat orgs$8.7M to everyone else
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +12% since the first grant, against -1% for the ones you funded once.
44 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 28 since wound down; 20 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Re-uppedFunded once
Organizations
44
42
Total granted
$20M
$2.1M
Median revenue growth · since first grant
+12%
-1%
Still filing today
27%
12%
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 33% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6.6M went to new ones.
RenewedFirst-time
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
EducationHealthYouth DevelopmentRecreation & SportsHuman ServicesPhilanthropyOther
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
- CMCENTRAL MONTANA MEDICAL CENTER8× · 2017–2024 · $6.5M · revenue +63%
- PCPETROLEUM COUNTY COMMUNITY CENTER5× · 2020–2024 · $4.3M · revenue +41% · 30% of their budget
- TATCT ACTIVITIES6× · 2017–2022 · $1.6M · revenue +642% · 29% of their budget
Funded once
- MIMAKE IT HAPPENone grant, 2017 · $341k
- WAWINIFRED AMBULANCEone grant, 2019 · $296k
- OOTHERone grant, 2021 · $278k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
04Your field
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.
1
North Central Montana Economic
To provide through local leadership economic, technical, and engineering information, and access to resources to improve theeconomies in the area.
Community Improvement
2
Montana Center for the Arts
Our mission is to enrich the cultural landscape of our community and beyond, providing a platform for creativity, education and entertainment.
Arts & Culture
3
Crook County Medical Services
To preserve rural health care
Philanthropy
4
Fairmont Area Chamber of Commerce
Chamber of commerce
—
5
Montana City Volunteer Fire Department
The montana city volunteer fire department is an all-volunteer fire department dedicated to the protection of life and property in the community of montana city and surrounding area
Public Safety & Disaster
6
Montana Legacy Project
Recreation & Sports
7
4-H Clubs & Affiliated 4-H Organizations
Promote and support 4-h club work in beaverhead county montana
Youth Development
8
Altoona Area Chamber of Commerce
The promotion of altoona, ia
Community Improvement
9
Montana Business Leadership Council
The mblc exists to encourage and enact business-friendly policies that create good-paying jobs and make montana a better place to live. the primary purpose of the mblc is to educate the public on important business issues, enable citizens…
Community Improvement
10
Boundary County Historical
Museum
Arts & Culture
11
Montana Natural History Center
The montana natural history center promotes appreciation, understanding, and stewardship of nature and the environment through education.
Environment
12
Longmont Swim Club
Competitive swimming program
—
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Central Montana Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Lewistown Art Center. 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 15 years old; the field is 22. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 10% of your money.
Closures · last 5 years
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 7% of the field you don’t fund.
orgs you fund
3%2/78
the rest of the field
7%
11/156
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.
05the grantee network
21 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
6
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
6
Early backer (in before they grew)
20/21
Grantees still filing
11/21
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Other$13,975,717Health$6,503,701Community Improvement$4,349,590Public Safety & Disaster$1,680,560Philanthropy$1,601,220Recreation & Sports$651,709Youth Development$193,192
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 CENTRAL MONTANA MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds PETROLEUM COUNTY COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds DENTON FIRE RELIEF- FCDRF ↗
- Who funds TCT ACTIVITIES ↗
- Who funds LEWISTOWN SOCCER CLUB ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF LEWISTOWN ↗
- Who funds LEWISTOWN ART CENTER ↗
- Who funds WINNETT ACES INC ↗
- Who funds ELK'S LODGE 456 ↗
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.
Town Pump Charitable FoundationMT22.6× affinity9 shared granteesties to 8 of 8Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: Town Pump Charitable Foundation · Montana Community Foundation Inc · The Homestead Foundation Inc · Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation · Treacy Foundation · 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 organisation CENTRAL MONTANA 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.
2025
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
typical government reliance, FY20–25
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. 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.
05Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: DENTON FIRE RELIEF- FCDRF.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
high risk
~3 months of operating runway; revenue contracted over 2 filed years.
Track record & reputation
medium risk
2 years of Form 990 filings, still active.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 874132573 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on DENTON FIRE RELIEF- FCDRF, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- FlagFinancial stability— Roughly 3 months of cash on hand.
- WatchSustained operations— Filing through 2023; revenue contracted over the period.
- WatchReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 85% of their budget — load-bearing; a dependency Plinth would track.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Central Montana Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Central Montana Foundation through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines