· Private foundation
Harriet Cheney Cowles Foundation
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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k2 grants · $50k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $270k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INNOVIA FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF SPOKANE COUNTY | $120,000 |
| INLAND NORTHWEST LAND CONSERVANCY | $100,000 |
| MULTI-ETHNIC BUSINESS ASSOCIATION (AHANA) | $50,000 |
| SEATTLE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| VILLAGE COHOUSING WORKS | $25,000 |
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 (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% 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.
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 +52% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 4 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, 31% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $220k 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
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION2× · 2020–2022 · $451k · revenue +42%- MPMADDIE'S PLACE2× · 2020–2022 · $250k · revenue +526%
- ININLAND NORTHWEST LAND TRUST4× · 2020–2024 · $123k · revenue +61%
Funded once
Spokane Valley Hubgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $750k · revenue +112% · 38% of their budget- WUWHITWORTH UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $500k · revenue +1%
- SGSpokane Guilds' School & Neuromuscular Centergraduatedone grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue +52%
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 Spokane Parks Foundation cultivates the health, growth, and continued enjoyment of our communities by inspiring giving and passion for our parks.
To prepare a diverse range of students for a life of learning in post-secondary education, citizenship, and leadership.
The Community Foundation of Snohomish County (the Foundation) is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization incorporated under the laws of the State of Washington. The Foundation serves as a community foundation, supporting a broad spectrum of…
The mission of the Community Health Association of Spokane (CHAS Health) is to improve the overall health of the communities we serve by expanding access to quality health and wellness services.
To build and enhance the competitiveness of Washington State's film and associated creative industry. We accomplish this by marketing and managing the state's production incentive program, representing the state in national and…
Founded in 2001, Spark Northwest accelerates the just transition to clean energy in the Pacific Northwest. Spark Northwest uses two primary strategies: (1) on-the-ground project consulting, focusing on communities with limited financial…
The mission of Visit Spokane is to help promote economic development for Spokane County through tourism and tourism promotion.
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.
United way of snohomish county improves lives for families in snohomish county by bringing people, resources, and strategy together.
The Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce, dba Greater Spokane, Incorporated, primary mission is to lead transformative business and community initiatives to build a robust regional economy.
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,…
To grow a lasting culture of generosity and well-being in the South Puget Sound through connection, leadership, and investment.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Northwest Harvest Emm and the most unlike its peers is James E Hughes Jr 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 36 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 39 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 Spokane Valley Hub ↗
- Who funds Innovia Foundation ↗
- Who funds WHITWORTH UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Spokane Symphony and Fox Theater Endowment Fund ↗
- Who funds MADDIE'S PLACE ↗
- Who funds INLAND NORTHWEST LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Boys & Girls Club of Spokane County ↗
- Who funds Spokane Guilds' School & Neuromuscular Center ↗
- Who funds Carl Maxey Center ↗
- Who funds Seattle Children's Foundation ↗
- Who funds JAMES E HUGHES JR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Thacher School Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST HARVEST EMM ↗
- Who funds Mt Spokane 2000 ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF REDLANDS ↗
- Who funds LIFE SERVICES OF SPOKANE ↗
- Who funds Community Center for the Arts ↗
- Who funds Spokane Symphony Society ↗
- Who funds LEGAL FOUNDATION OF WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds CREATE YOUR STATEMENT ↗
- Who funds SANTA BARBARA RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds Foodbank of Santa Barbara County Inc ↗
- Who funds Co-Lab Projects ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON POLICY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MAINSPRING SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds COBALT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds United States Association for UNHCR ↗
- Who funds The Art Association of Jackson Hole ↗
- Who funds Central Texas Food Bank 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: Innovia Foundation · The Avista Foundation · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · The Bergquist Foundation Attn Eric Sachtjen · Women Helping Women Fund · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Seattle Foundation · The Is & Emily Fetterman Foundation · Pierce Charitable Trust Xxx-Xx-Xxxx · Numerica Credit Union · Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund a Charitable Foundation · Bnsf Railway 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 Harriet Cheney Cowles 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.
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 Harriet Cheney Cowles Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Harriet Cheney Cowles 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.