· Private foundation
Gow Family 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k19 grants · $440k
- $50k–250k15 grants · $1.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| POTTERY NORTHWEST | $220,000 |
| CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY | $200,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $200,000 |
| YWCA OF SEATTLEKINGSNOHOMISH COUNTY | $150,000 |
| YUAN TZE REN XUE CENTER | $150,000 |
| INQUIRING SYSTEMS | $100,000 |
| IFWHENHOW LAWYERING FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE | $100,000 |
| NORTHWEST IMMIGRATION RIGHTS PROJECT | $50,000 |
| FARESTART | $50,000 |
| NORTHWEST COMMUNITY BAIL FUND | $50,000 |
| RAINIER SCHOLARS | $50,000 |
| WASHINGTON WOMEN IN NEED | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| VANCOUVER FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| ISLANDWOOD | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.9M) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% of those 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.
43 repeat relationships — 32 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 2 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $300k 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
- FLFOOD LIFELINE5× · 2017–2022 · $850k · revenue +89%
- YTYuan Tze Ren Xue Center6× · 2018–2024 · $840k · revenue +32% · 50% of their budget
POTTERY NORTHWEST7× · 2017–2024 · $460k · revenue +288%
Funded once
- YTYUAN TZE REN XUE CENTERone grant, 2017 · $140k
- CWCLACKAMAS WOMEN'S SERVICESgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $100k · revenue +264%
Save The Children Federation Incone grant, 2023 · $75k · revenue +0%
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.
We are workers, united across different industries to improve our working conditions and our lives. We come together as working people to build power through education, organizing, and enforcement. We work to raise and uphold standards in…
Washington Ethnic Studies Now WAESN is a multigenerational majority POC-led nonprofit advancing Ethnic Studies and racial justice in Washington. We center people of color build youth-centered leadership and learning and organize…
Building changes advances equitable responses to homelessness in washington state, with a focus on children, youth, and families. we work at the intersection of housing, education, and health systems, partnering with communities and public…
KCSARC is the largest and most comprehensive non-profit provider of sexual assault services in King County and Washington State. Our vision is a community free of sexual violence. Our mission is to: give voice to victims, their families,…
School's out washington (sowa) drives positive systemic change so that all washington's children and youth, particularly those furthest from justice, have access to a robust ecosystem of high-quality expanded learning programs.
To protect and promote every persons right to access the full range of reproductive healthcare choices in Washington State, including safe and legal abortion, through education, advocacy, lobbying and coalition-building
LCSNW partners with individuals, families and communities for health, justice and hope. LCSNW provides a wide variety of social services in Oregon, Washington and Idaho and serves people of all ages, cultures and faiths.
RE Sources mobilizes people of Northwest Washington to build just and thriving communities and to protect the land, water, and climate on which we all depend.
Disability rights washington's mission is to advance the dignity, equality, and self determination of people with disabilities. we work to pursue justice on matters related to human and legal rights.
Gender Justice League's mission is to empower all people to eliminate discrimination and prejudice based on sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation in Washington State, and to ensure that trans and gender diverse…
FVLC helps diverse communities in Alameda County heal from domestic violence and sexual assault, advocating for justice and healthy relationships. We provide survivor-centered legal and crisis intervention services, offer prevention for…
Advocate for tax policy in Washington State
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Childrens Home Society of Washington and the most unlike its peers is Beecher's Pure Food Kids 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 34 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
43 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. 43 of the 53 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 FOOD LIFELINE ↗
- Who funds Yuan Tze Ren Xue Center ↗
- Who funds FARESTART ↗
- Who funds POTTERY NORTHWEST ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF SEATTLE-KING COUNTY-SNOHOMISH COUNTY ↗
- Who funds LifeWire ↗
- Who funds RAINIER SCHOLARS ↗
- Who funds ISLANDWOOD ↗
- Who funds RECOVERY CAFE ↗
- Who funds The Pachamama Alliance ↗
- Who funds IFWHENHOW ↗
- Who funds Refugee Womens Alliance ↗
- Who funds Washington Women in Need ↗
- Who funds OVERLAKE SERVICE LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTHCARE ↗
- Who funds CAMP KOREY ↗
- Who funds AMARA ↗
- Who funds RAINIER PREP ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Northwest Community Bail Fund ↗
- Who funds WILD SALMON CENTER ↗
- Who funds DELTA GAMMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLACKAMAS WOMEN'S SERVICES ↗
- Who funds INQUIRING SYSTEMS INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDHAVEN ↗
- Who funds Save The Children Federation Inc ↗
- Who funds BEECHER'S PURE FOOD KIDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LEGAL HOPE ↗
- Who funds ISSAQUAH SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILDRENS HOME SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds COCOON HOUSE ↗
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: Seattle Foundation · United Way of King County · The Norcliffe Foundation · Puget Sound Energy Foundation · Medina Foundation · Grousemont Foundation · Real Progress Foundation · Employees Community Fund of Boeing-Puget Sound · Windermere Foundation · Glassybaby White Light Fund · Lucky Seven Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management 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 Gow Family 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.
- Wild Salmon Center — 49% of income from government
- Clackamas Women's Services — 33% of income from government
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- The Center for Independent Documentary Inc — 6% 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 Gow Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Gow Family 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.