· Public charity
Freshwater Society
Inspiring and empowering people to value and preserve our freshwater resources.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2023–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 5 grants below total $110,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $140,735 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $30,735 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BLACK SWAMP CONSERVANCY | $30,000 |
| SAIGNAW BASIN LAND CONSERVANCY | $20,000 |
| LITTLE FORKS CONSERVANCY | $20,000 |
| LANDMARK CONSERVANCY INC | $20,000 |
| MINNESOTA LAND TRUST | $20,000 |
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 (FY23–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 96% 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.
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.
8 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- CCCARLETON COLLEGE2× · 2023–2024 · $57k · revenue +6%
- BSBLACK SWAMP CONSERVANCY3× · 2023–2025 · $50k · revenue +11%
- MLMINNESOTA LAND TRUST3× · 2023–2025 · $50k · revenue +36%
Funded once
- TOTRUSTEES OF THE HAMLINE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTAone grant, 2023 · $11k · revenue +9%
- SBSAGINAW BASIN LAND CONSERVANCYgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +35%
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.
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
The mission of the lake champlain land trust is to save the scenic beauty, natural communities, and recreational amenities of lake champlain by permanently preserving significant islands, shoreline areas, and natural communities in the…
Safeguard southern michigan's land and water to support diverse, resilient, and thriving communities - forever
To conserve the land, water and scenic character of leelanau county, and to provide educational programs to develop an understanding and appreciation of leelanau county's natural heritage.
Glacial Lakes Conservancy, as a land trust, is a nonprofit organization that, as part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement acquisitions.
To conserve the unique character of tennessee's natural and historic landscapes and sites for future generations.
Conservation legacy engages future leaders who protect, restore, and enhance our nation's lands through community-based service.in 2024, conservation legacy engaged 2,524 participants who completed over 1.5 million service hours on public…
Conservation of lyme's natural, scenic and historic land & water resources.
To conserve natural land and open space - including forests, wetlands, meadows, agricultural lands, and places of scenic beauty - to provide habitat for wildlife and to enrich the lives of people.
The mission of the land trust accreditation commission is to inspire excellence, promote public trust and ensure permanence in the conservation of open lands by recognizing land trust organizations that meet rigorous quality standards and…
To conserve, sustain, and connect natural areas, land, and waters that make the places we live special
Obtain and manage land of ecological significance.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Landmark Conservancy Inc and the most unlike its peers is Trustees of the Hamline University of Minnesota. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 10 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 MARINE AREA COMMUNITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CARLETON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BLACK SWAMP CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds LANDMARK CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds The Little Forks Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE HAMLINE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA ↗
- Who funds SAGINAW BASIN LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
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: Land Trust Alliance 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 Freshwater Society 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 Freshwater Society?
Find your warmest path to Freshwater Society 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.