· Private foundation
Fireside 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 46% of Fireside Foundation’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $31k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $138k
- $250k+1 grant · $260k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MIT | $259,752 |
| Fabretto Childrens Foundation | $40,311 |
| Court Sports 4 Life | $23,333 |
| Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust | $20,000 |
| Yampa Valley Community Foundation | $17,500 |
| Lift Up Routt County | $15,000 |
| Nope's Island Concervation Association | $12,000 |
| Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club Foundation | $10,000 |
| Refugee One | $7,500 |
| Sandy Hook Promise | $6,000 |
| Jeffco Open Space Foundation | $3,000 |
| The Colorado Sun | $3,000 |
| Strings Music Festival | $3,000 |
| Food Bank of the Rockies | $2,330 |
| Routt County Search and Rescue | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY21–25, $217k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 35% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 21% of Fireside 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, 11% of the giving stays in IL; read by stated purpose it is 14% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +46% since the first grant, against +44% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 7 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $76k 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
- RREFUGEEONE7× · 2017–2025 · $95k · revenue +190%
- SASparkHope Automotive2× · 2023–2024 · $90k · revenue +46%
- LULift Up of Routt County4× · 2022–2025 · $50k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- CCROSSPURPOSEgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $150k · revenue +73%
- MKMIT Koch Instituteone grant, 2024 · $128k
- SRSouth Routt School District RE-3one grant, 2024 · $81k
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.
To broaden the nature of a liberal arts education; teach critical thinking about social & environmental issues; foster understanding of & respect for natural & human communities; & cultivate a sense of place that encourages personal,…
The Boulder Watershed Collective is a 501c3 non-profit stakeholder-driven organization established to address forested watershed health,resiliency and stewardship. We have three program areas: ClimateAdaptation and Resilience Watershed…
Be a catalyst! Ignite our community's passion for nature and science.
Rocky mountain wild works to protect, connect, and restore wildlife and wild lands in the southern rocky mountain region. we work to secure the biodiversity of the mountains, plains, and desert ecosystems of colorado, wyoming, utah, and…
AIA Colorado,is the voice of the architecture profession in Colorado. Through advocacy, leadership development, education and resources for architects, the organization supports architecture professionals in designing a better world where…
Yampatika's mission is to inspire environmental stewardship through education. They fulfil that mission by developing environmental learning opportunities that serve the children and adults of Northwest Colorado.
Protecting the open land and special places of the roaring fork and middle colorado river valleys for wildlife, agriculture, and community forever.
To restore water to colorado's rivers.
To provide timely, credible and accessible analyses of fiscal and economic issues facing colorado to inform public policy debates and promote economic prosperity
Rogue Climate's mission is to empower Southern Oregon communities most impacted by climate change including low-income, rural, youth, seniors & communities of color, to win climate justice by organizing for clean energy, sustainable jobs &…
The purpose(s) of the Partnership is to improve the quality of life and economic well-being across Routt County by: (i) enabling business and job retention to increase employment and improve the public welfare, (ii) promoting and assisting…
The Center brings together mission-focused, nonpolitical organizations working at the confluence of land and water science, education, and stewardship to magnify our impact and ensure the longevity of our natural resources for future…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Npx Charitable Inc and the most unlike its peers is Rivanna Trails Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 29 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) — 6% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 68 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 CROSSPURPOSE ↗
- Who funds REFUGEEONE ↗
- Who funds SparkHope Automotive ↗
- Who funds PEER HEALTH EXCHANGE INC ↗
- Who funds NPX CHARITABLE INC ↗
- Who funds COLORADO CATTLEMEN'S AGRICULTURAL LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Lift Up of Routt County ↗
- Who funds The Breakthrough Institute ↗
- Who funds YAMPA VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FABRETTO CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Nopes Island Conservation Association Inc ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION STEAMBOAT SPRINGS WINTER SPORTS CLUB ↗
- Who funds STRINGS MUSIC FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds Spark Ventures ↗
- Who funds ECHINACEA MONTESSORI SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SEMINARS AT STEAMBOAT ↗
- Who funds ONEGOAL ↗
- Who funds THE WEEKAPAUG FOUNDATION FOR CONSERVATION ↗
- Who funds JEFFCO OPEN SPACE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SANDY HOOK PROMISE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE STEAMBOAT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds ROUTT COUNTY SEARCH AND RESCUE INC ↗
- Who funds Vanderbilt University ↗
- Who funds Routt County Humane Society ↗
- Who funds YAMPA VALLEY LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds IMPACT CHARITABLE ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS POLICY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds NEW TRIER EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROUTT COUNTY RIDERS ↗
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: Colorado Gives Foundation · Gates Family Foundation · Craig-Scheckman Family Foundation · Tatar Family Foundation · The Denver Foundation · Rose Community Foundation · El Pomar Foundation · Steve and Kelly Bloom Family Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · The Colorado Trust · Anschutz Family Foundation · Xcel Energy 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 Fireside 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.
- Sandy Hook Promise Foundation — 0% 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 Fireside Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Fireside 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.