· Private foundation
Environment Now
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k12 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k44 grants · $1.1M
- $50k–250k5 grants · $450k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE | $175,000 |
| CALIFORNIA COASTKEEPER ALLIANCE | $120,000 |
| RESTORE THE DELTA | $55,000 |
| SAN FRANCISCO BAYKEEPER | $50,000 |
| ROCKEFELLER FAMILY FUND | $50,000 |
| CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY | $45,000 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL LAW FOUNDATION | $45,000 |
| SAVE CALIFORNIA SALMON | $45,000 |
| PACHAMAMA ALLIANCE | $40,000 |
| PACHAMAMA ALLIANCE | $40,000 |
| LEADERSHIP COUNSEL FOR JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY | $40,000 |
| CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| RIDGES TO RIFFLES INDIGENOUS CONSERVATION GROUP | $35,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF OREGON | $35,000 |
| EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE | $30,000 |
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 (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 80% 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 Environment Now’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 +62% since the first grant, against +43% for the ones you funded once.
54 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2024, 23 since wound down; 15 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $329k 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
- CFCENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY INC7× · 2017–2024 · $705k · revenue +127%
- CCCalifornia Coastkeeper dba California Coastkeeper Alliance6× · 2017–2024 · $597k · revenue +113%
NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC5× · 2017–2022 · $405k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- PAPACHAMAMA ALLIANCE FOR ITS GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR THE RIGHTS OF NATURE PROJECTone grant, 2023 · $78k
- RFROCKEFELLER FAMILY FUNDone grant, 2023 · $50k
- WAWATERKEEPER ALLIANCE FISCAL SPONSOR FOR LORETO COASTKEEPER CABO PULMO WATEone grant, 2023 · $45k
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.
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
The California Wilderness Coalition protects the natural landscapes that make California unique, providing clean air and water, a home to wildlife, and a place for recreation and spiritual renewal.
Our mission is to fight against fossil fuel executives and industries that have turned our communities into dumping grounds for toxic waste, poisoning our air, water, lan, and bodies. We organize to oppose giant oil refineries, dirty…
The foundation works with diverse groups representing many interests to acquire and restore critical wildlife habitat and protecting species
The resource renewal institute facilitates the creation, development and implementation of practical strategies to solve the entire complex environmental problem by addressing it comprehensively.
To create a california where balancing economic growth and environmental protection is not only a vision, but also a reality.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
The Sierra Fund (TSF) is a non-profit organization with a mission to restore ecosystem and community resiliency in the Sierra Nevada.
Provide scientific support and tools for decision making and communication through collaborative efforts.
At Yosemite Rivers Alliance, we unite conservation and community to protect and restore the three rivers that ?ow through the Yosemite Regionthe Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Merced.
The Chile-California Council is a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to developing and promoting joint endeavors and cooperative relations between Chile and California, as well as individuals, legal entities and other institutions in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Water Foundation and the most unlike its peers is California Sportfishing Protection Allia. 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 27 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
83 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. 83 of the 134 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 LEONARDO DICAPRIO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds California Coastkeeper dba California Coastkeeper Alliance ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Earth Island Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION CONGRESS ↗
- Who funds WATERKEEPER ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds RESTORE THE DELTA ↗
- Who funds CRAG LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES WATERKEEPER ↗
- Who funds Russian Riverkeeper ↗
- Who funds FIREFIGHTERS UNITED FOR SAFETY ETHICS AND ECOLOGY ↗
- Who funds Save California Salmon ↗
- Who funds LEADERSHIP COUNSEL FOR JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY ↗
- Who funds LOS PADRES FORESTWATCH INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL LAW FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR FISHERIES RESOURCES ↗
- Who funds SAN DIEGO COASTKEEPER ↗
- Who funds Baykeeper ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE RIVER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Monterey Coastkeeper ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN STATE SALMON ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE CENTER ↗
- Who funds The Pachamama Alliance ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA CHANNELKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds Orange County Coastkeeper ↗
- Who funds HEAL THE BAY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE EEL RIVER ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds BAYORG ↗
- Who funds ROCKEFELLER FAMILY FUND INC ↗
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: Patagoniaorg · Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation · The Rose Foundation for Communities the Environment · Resources Legacy Fund · The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment Inc · Natural Resources Defense Council Inc · Water Foundation · The Marisla Foundation · The Schmidt Family Foundation · Liberty Hill Foundation · California Community Foundation · The California Endowment
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 Environment Now 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.