· Private foundation
Donald and Ruby Branson Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Eastern Sierra Institute | $20,000 |
| Lone Pine Unified School Dist | $19,150 |
| Stay Indiana Youth Aviation | $11,000 |
| Wildcare Eastern Sierra | $10,000 |
| Housed Great Falls | $6,000 |
| Friends of the LP airport | $5,000 |
| Land and Trust of Alabama | $3,500 |
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 (FY17–22, $38k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 47% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
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.
15 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 4 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, 35% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $49k 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
- WEWildcare Eastern Sierra8× · 2017–2025 · $108k · revenue +42%
- HHAVEN4× · 2019–2022 · $26k · revenue +10%
- YSYOUTH SERVICE BUREAU OF ST JOSEPH COUNTY INC3× · 2020–2022 · $13k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- SISTEM IN AVIATION YOUTH INDIANAone grant, 2023 · $21k
- ESEASTERN SIERRA INSTITUTE OF COLLABORATIVE EDUCATIONone grant, 2017 · $15k
- WEWILDCARE EASTERN SIERRA PROGRAMone grant, 2023 · $15k
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.
The international snow leopard trust aims to ethically conserve snow leopards and their high mountain ecosystems through partnerships with indigenous peoples and local communities, and through research to improve the understanding of snow…
To promote community stewardship and advance scientific knowledge of watersheds through reserarch, monitoring and education for the benefit of the Sierra Nevada region and beyond.
Nature collective's mission is to drive a passion for nature for all. we think inclusively and diversely when serving those devoid of nature those who remember nature and want to connect back to it and those who have an affinity with…
Mission/work: to provide a protected sanctuary for native wildlife and their habitats while connecting people with nature in ways that inspire exploration and lifelong environmental conservation.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
The Elkhorn Slough Foundation's mission is to conserve and restore Elkhorn Slough and its watershed, California's largest tidal salt marsh south of San Francisco Bay. Renowned for its extraordinary biodiversity, Elkhorn Slough features a…
Maintain the swan valley's unique natural resources and ensure that a vibrant human community can sustain itself through stewardship, education, economic viability, and conservation on public and private lands.
Inspiring communities to save wildlife for future generations.
Wildlands Network works to reconnect, restore and rewild North America so that life-in all its diversity-can thrive.
LandPaths' mission is to foster a love of the land in Sonoma County. LandPaths creates ways for people to experience the beauty, understand the value, and assist in healing the land in their local communities.
Advancing sustainability in the western area of the united states through a series of programs and activities designed to promote better ranching practices. a strong focus is to provide ranchers with the information, tools, technical…
Maine Audubon works to conserve Maine's wildlife and habitat by engaging people of all ages in education, conservation, and action. We are helping the people of Maine become the nation's most informed and effective stewards of wildlife and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Inyo Mono Advocates for Community Action and the most unlike its peers is Days for Girls International. 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 47 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 Wildcare Eastern Sierra ↗
- Who funds Eastern Sierra Institute for Collaborative Education ↗
- Who funds HAVEN ↗
- Who funds California Poets in the Schools ↗
- Who funds YOUTH SERVICE BUREAU OF ST JOSEPH COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds THE LAND TRUST OF NORTH ALABAMA INC ↗
- Who funds THE WEBB SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds Inyo Mono Advocates for Community Action ↗
- Who funds XERCES SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds WILD IRIS FAMILY COUNSELING & CRISIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE LONE PINE AIRPORT ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM IN MOTION RIDING CENTER ↗
- Who funds The Houston Food Bank ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
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: 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 Donald and Ruby Branson 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.
- Xerces Society Inc — 22% 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 Donald and Ruby Branson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Donald and Ruby Branson 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.