· Private foundation
Deer Creek Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $2k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $75k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+1 grant · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ARCH CITY DEFENDERS | $1,000,000 |
| CONSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER | $200,000 |
| EARTHJUSTICE | $200,000 |
| THE JOHN MUIR PROJECT OF THE EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE | $180,000 |
| TULANE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CLINIC | $155,000 |
| CRAG LAW CENTER | $115,000 |
| BEYOND NUCLEAR | $110,000 |
| ST LOUIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE | $100,000 |
| CENTER FOR PROGRESSIVE REFORM | $75,000 |
| COMMITTEE TO BRIDGE THE GAP | $60,000 |
| VERIFIED VOTING FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| FREE AND FAIR LITIGATION GROUP | $45,000 |
| NORTHWEST ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 71% of your 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 6% of Deer Creek 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +43% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 1 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100k 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
- ADARCHCITY DEFENDERS5× · 2020–2024 · $2.2M · revenue +58%
EARTHJUSTICE5× · 2020–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +16%- CACONSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER5× · 2020–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +1%
Funded once
- GAGovernment Accountability Projectone grant, 2020 · $80k · revenue +15%
- LSLONE STAR LEGAL AIDone grant, 2023 · $75k · revenue +7%
CANDIDone grant, 2020 · $2k · revenue -4%
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.
CIVIL LIBERTIES DEFENSE CENTER (CLDC) educates the general public about their rights and privileges under the US Constitution and provides free legal support to climate and social justice activists.
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
The national caucus of environmental legislators empowers a nonpartisan network of legislative champions to protect, conserve, and improve the natural and human environment.
The environmental law & policy center (elpc) is the midwest's leading public interest environmental legal advocacy and ecobusiness innovation organization, and among the nation's leaders. we develop and lead successful strategic…
Dedicated to protecting the world's natural environment on behalf of the public by serving as a public interest law firm. refer to schedule o, part iii, line 4a, for list of litigated cases or advocacy work.
Public interest research and litigation in the general area of environmental protection.
Conservation law foundation, inc. (clf) protects new england's environment for the benefit of all people and future generations. we use the law, science, and markets to create solutions that preserve and restore our natural resources,…
The federation for american immigration reform's (fair) mission is to educate the public about the economic, sociological, environmental, demographic and other effects of mass immigration to the united states.
Using legal advocacy to make advances in science and technology safer for people and the planet.
Nacwa is the national voice of public clean water utilities, shaping water policy, convening a vibrant peer network, and empowering water leaders.
To research and develop centrist policy ideas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the most unlike its peers is Committee to Bridge the Gap. 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 28 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 1% 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.
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 27 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 ARCHCITY DEFENDERS ↗
- Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
- Who funds CONSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR PROGRESSIVE REFORM INC ↗
- Who funds Verified Voting Foundation ↗
- Who funds CRAG LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds CIVIL RIGHTS CORPS ↗
- Who funds BEYOND NUCLEAR ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC JUSTICE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Committee to Bridge the Gap ↗
- Who funds ELECTRONIC PRIVACY INFORMATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds PUBLIC EMPLOYEES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY INC ↗
- Who funds WILDEARTH GUARDIANS ↗
- Who funds CASCADIA WILDLANDS ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FREE AND FAIR LITIGATION GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds Government Accountability Project ↗
- Who funds LONE STAR LEGAL AID ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds CANDID ↗
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 Schmidt Family Foundation · Patagoniaorg · Tides Foundation · New Venture Fund · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Equal Justice Works · The Nathan Cummings Foundation Inc · Wellspring Philanthropic Fund Inc · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · Jewish Communal Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc
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 Deer Creek 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.
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 Deer Creek Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Deer Creek 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.