· Private foundation
Cowles Family Foundation
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 FY2022–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $387k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $353k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE SHE COLLEGE FUND | $120,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AM | $100,000 |
| NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS | $73,000 |
| TEWA WOMEN UNITED | $60,000 |
| CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| FIRST NATIONS DEVELOPMENTAL INSTITU | $40,000 |
| OPEN DOOR CLINIC | $40,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD SOUTHERN NEW ENG | $33,000 |
| ADDISON COUNTY PARENT CHILD CENTER | $32,000 |
| HILL-STEAD MUSEUM | $30,000 |
| FARMINGTON LAND TRUST | $30,000 |
| DREAMING OUTLOUD FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| SOUL FIRE FARM INSTITUTE | $25,000 |
| CO CANAL TRUST | $25,000 |
| UPPER PECOS WATER SHED | $12,500 |
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, $150k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 5% of Cowles Family 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. Read by recipient address, 12% of the giving stays in NM; read by stated purpose it is 16% — more 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.
18 repeat relationships — 16 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; $127k 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
- TSTHE SAFE HOUSE EDUCATION FUND2× · 2022–2023 · $105k · revenue +87% · 27% of their budget
- FNFIRST NATIONS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE3× · 2023–2025 · $67k · revenue +138%
- FLFarmington Land Trust3× · 2023–2025 · $63k · revenue +30%
Funded once
Feeding Americaone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue +17%- KPKENEY PARK SUSTAINABILITY PROJECTgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +137%
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.
Protect Connecticuts farmland for agricultural use by purchasing and accepting donations of agricultural conservation easements
NOFA-NH actively promotes organic, regenerative, ecologically sound farming, gardening, eating, and land care practices for healthy communities. NOFA-NH helps people build local, just, and sustainable food systems.
The mission of the Organic Farmers Association is to provide a strong and unified national voice for domestic certified organic producers so that organic agriculture will become the basis of a viable United States food and agricultural…
Maine Farmland Trust protects farmland, supports farmers, and advances the future of farming.
MISSION: bring all of American agriculture together, with farmers and ranchers at the center, to collectively identify and tackle critical, long-term issues. We collaborate, communicate, educate, advocate and utilize science to advance the…
Our mission is to educate, organize and advocate for food and farming systems to become economically prosperous, ecologically sound and socially equitable.
Global Forest Generation restores and protects forest ecosystems in partnership with grassroots leaders and local communities across vast landscapes which play a critical role in preserving water, protecting biodiversity, storing carbon,…
Food & water watch conducts extensive research and public education to ensure the food and water we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced. so we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of…
Zero foodprint is mobilizing the food world around agricultural climate solutions. our work aims to create a circular economy that incentivizes practices that actively draw down carbon dioxide and offer our best hope of addressing the…
The franklin land trust works to conserve farms, forests, wildlands, and other natural resources significant to the quality of the environment, economy, and rural character of western massachusetts.
Friends of the earth strives for a more healthy and just world by defendng the environment and human health while advancing social and economic justice by conducting research and education, transforming the economy so it protects the…
MISSION: bring all of American agriculture together, with farmers and ranchers at the center, to collectively identify and tackle critical, long-term issues. We collaborate, communicate, educate, advocate and utilize science to advance the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Soul Fire Farm Institute Inc and the most unlike its peers is Feeding America. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
19 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. 19 of the 26 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 PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL NETWORK OF ABORTION FUNDS INC ↗
- Who funds TEWA WOMEN UNITED ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE SAFE HOUSE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds FIRST NATIONS DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Farmington Land Trust ↗
- Who funds HILL-STEAD MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SOUL FIRE FARM INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds DREAMING OUT LOUD INC ↗
- Who funds Community Health Services of Addison Cty Inc ↗
- Who funds LAKE CHAMPLAIN COMMITTEE INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK FARMER FUND INC ↗
- Who funds 350ORG ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
- Who funds FOOD 4 FARMERS INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds FARMINGTON RIVER WATERSHED ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds KENEY PARK SUSTAINABILITY PROJECT ↗
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: Hartford Foundation for Public Giving · The Vermont Community Foundation · Network for Good · National Philanthropic Trust · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · 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 Cowles Family 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Farmington River Watershed Association Inc — 69% of income from government
- Connecticut River Watershed Council Inc — 40% of income from government
- Keney Park Sustainability Project — 37% of income from government
- Hill-Stead Museum — 7% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Cowles Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Cowles Family 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.