· Private foundation
Helen B Sutherland 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHANCE TO BECOME - COLUMBIA LEARNING CENTER | $8,815 |
| OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $2,500 |
| CALDERA ARTS | $1,500 |
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 (FY17–17, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +76% since the first grant, against +44% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2023, 7 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 FY2023, 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
TOGETHER WE ARE GREATER THAN5× · 2018–2022 · $28k · revenue +20%- PMPORTLAND METRO ARTS4× · 2018–2021 · $21k · revenue +76%
- CLCOLUMBIA LEARNING CENTER2× · 2019–2023 · $19k · revenue ×31
Funded once
- CUCONCORDIA UNIVERSITYone grant, 2018 · $25k · revenue -100%
- MIMETROARTS INC DBA COGNIZARTone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue -41%
- WFWORLD FORESTRY CENTERone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue -22%
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.
Lewis & clark is a premier private higher education institution offering an exceptional education in an inclusive environment. by fostering critical thinking, innovation, creativity, civic engagement, and leadership, both inside and…
Pica acknowledges and advances the emerging ideas in art by fostering the creative explorations of contemporary artists.
The mission of third rail repertory theatre is to provide a dynamic artistic home for theatre audiences in portland by fostering a professional local company, which, through collaboration and discipline, brings to life exceptional stories…
The mission for the central oregon center for the arts is to champion an inclusive, vibrant center for the arts that brings transformative and diverse cultural performances and experiences to central oregon during all seasons
Founded in January 2018, Future Prairie is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit queer artist collective in Portland, Oregon. We pay LGBTQIA+ Oregon-based artists to design, curate, and produce art projects that showcase new and better dreams of the…
Artists repertory theatre's mission is to produce intimate, provacative theatre and provide a home for a diverse community of artists and audiences to take creative risks.
The Actors Conservatory provides rigorous actor training that engages the mind and the heart of the artist, while cultivating a spirit of lifelong investment in the arts.
Oregon ballet theatre is committed to sharing our passion for the expressive power of ballet, inspiring an enduring appreciation of dance, and connecting in meaningful ways to our community through excellence in performance, training, and…
The mission of oregon children's theater is to create exceptional theater experiences that transform lives. we do this by producing professional stage plays for young audiences, and through arts education classes and programs.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Oregon Historical Society and the most unlike its peers is Concordia University. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 21 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 TOGETHER WE ARE GREATER THAN ↗
- Who funds CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PORTLAND METRO ARTS ↗
- Who funds COLUMBIA LEARNING CENTER ↗
- Who funds PORTLAND TENNIS & EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds THE DOUGY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds METROARTS INC DBA COGNIZART ↗
- Who funds WORLD FORESTRY CENTER ↗
- Who funds TRILLIUM FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds JAPANESE GARDEN SOCIETY OF OREGON ↗
- Who funds OREGON ADAPTIVE SPORTS ↗
- Who funds GRABHORN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds STREET ROOTS INC ↗
- Who funds VITAL LIFE A MARQUIS AND CONSONUS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Braking Cycles ↗
- Who funds Profile Theatre Project ↗
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: The Oregon Community Foundation · Rose E Tucker Charitable Trust · The Jackson Foundation · Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust · Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund · OCF Joseph E Weston Public Foundation · The Swigert Foundation · The Collins Foundation · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · Juan Young Trust · Meyer Memorial Trust · Donald N McGregor 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 Helen B Sutherland 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Oregon Historical Society — 10% of income from government
- Together We Are Greater Than — 5% of income from government
- Profile Theatre Project — 2% of income from government
- Trillium Family Services — 2% of income from government
- The Dougy Center Inc — 1% of income from government
- World Forestry Center — 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 Helen B Sutherland Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Helen B Sutherland 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.