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Plinth

· Public charity

Humanities Montana

Humanities Montana serves communities through stories and conversation.

$257k
Granted FY2024still arriving
12
Grants FY2024still arriving
1
States reached
$39k
Largest
01What you fundRead
02The needRead
03Your edgeRead
04Your fieldRead
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.

Arts & Culture$799kEducation$196kRecreation & Sports$61kHuman Services$47kEnvironment$27kYouth Development$26kCommunity Improvement$24kScience & Tech$20kOther$0
02FY2024 · 12 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

The 12 grants below total $149,907 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $257,028 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $107,121 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.

By grant size · FY2024

  • Under $10k6 grants · $42k
  • $10k–50k6 grants · $108k
$10,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$425k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
montana state university bill$39,352
university of montana-osp$28,883
MAPS Media Institute$10,000
Mahchiwminahnahtik Chippewa C$10,000
the extreme history project$10,000
Montana Jewish Project$10,000
elk river arts & lectures$8,000
Dillon Public Library$7,300
Montana History Foundation$7,020
Ravalli County Museum$7,000
missoula art museum$6,352
North Missoula Community Deve$6,000
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY21–21, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 23%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%CENTER POLE: $10k → 23%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

03Your edge
repeat funding

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.

55%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$688k · 22 repeat orgs$570k to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +51% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.

22 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

22
54

Total granted

$688k
$527k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+51%
+22%

Still filing today

73%
74%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $43k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’17’18’19’20’21’22’23’24
Arts & CultureEducationHuman ServicesCommunity ImprovementRecreation & SportsEnvironmentOther

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

  • CL
    CROW LANGUAGE CONSORTIUM INC
    3× · 2020–2022 · $68k · revenue +104%
  • BS
    BIG SKY FILM INSTITUTE
    3× · 2017–2021 · $46k · revenue +92%
  • MW
    MISSOULA WRITING COLLABORATIVE
    3× · 2018–2021 · $40k · revenue +24%

Funded once

  • LW
    LEARNING WITH MEANING INC
    one grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue -71%
  • CC
    CARTER COUNTY GEOLOGICAL SOCIETYgraduated
    one grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue +439%
  • CD
    CHIEF DULL KNIFE COLLEGEgraduated
    one grant, 2021 · $18k · revenue +66%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

1
The Michael Murphey Western Institute in
Arts & Culture
2
Boundary County Historical Society Inc

Museum

Arts & Culture
3
Treasure County 89 Ers Inc

Preserving small town, local, historical assets - museum

—
4
Cascadia Art Museum

Cascadia Art Museum is an educational nonprofit 501(c)3 organization celebrating the rich tradition of the visual arts in the Northwest region, as shaped by the Cascade Mountains. The museum provides enriching experiences for community and…

Human Services
5
Museum of the Plains

The purposeof the museum of the plains is to preserve significant objects of the past. the museum fo the plains is an encyclopedic history museum established to bring about a better understanding and appreciation by the community and…

Arts & Culture
6
Montana Center for the Arts

Montana center for the arts purpose is to nurture, promote and expand cultural engagement and opportunity in our region. through collaboration with the community at large, and in partnership with the area's diverse cultural and educational…

Arts & Culture
7
Chelan County Historical Society

Developed by, for, and in conjunction with the community, the cashmere museum and pioneer village seeks to engage, educate, and entertain visitors both local and international. hundreds of volunteers have worked thousands of hours to make…

Arts & Culture
8
The Shoshone Museum Association

To preserve, interpret, and display local and natural history for education purposes.

—
9
Scenic Montana Trails
—
10
Wind River Valley Artist Guild
—
11
National Pronghorn Interpretive and Visitors Center

Educating the public about the biology, habitat and welfare of the Pronghorn.

Arts & Culture
12
Blaine County Wildlife Museum Foundation

To establish and operate the blaine county wildlife museum with the intent to provide quality wildlife museum exhibiting montana wildlife in their natural habitats, complete with audio and visual enhancement.

Arts & Culture

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Montana History Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Aasaisst to Language Society. 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.

← shrinkinggrowing →↓ leaning in → pulling backsteadyEarly Childhood Education C…Low-Income Housing ProvidersMontana Healthcare SystemsYouth Sports and Arts Progr…Animal Rescue and AdoptionSenior Services CentersWestern Sports & Rodeo Orga…Fundraising Professional De…
the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side
Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 27 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

THE FIELDby orgYOUR GRANTEESby number20%5%<5yr12%11%5–10yr20%21%10–20yr16%32%20–35yr18%27%35–55yr14%4%55yr+
THE FIELDby orgYOUR MONEYby value20%4%<5yr12%14%5–10yr20%16%10–20yr16%39%20–35yr18%23%35–55yr14%5%55yr+

The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 9% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund
4%3/81
the rest of the field
9%
675/7,361

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.

04the grantee network

64 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 64 of the 81 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.

2
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
21
Early backer (in before they grew)
60/64
Grantees still filing
45/64
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

CROW LANGUAGE CONSORTIUM INC — $68,000 · Arts & CultureCROW LANGUAGE CONSORTIUM INCMISSOULA CULTURAL COUNCIL dba ARTS MISSOULA — $58,000 · Arts & CultureMISSOULA CULTURAL COUNCIL dba ARTS MISSOULABIG SKY FILM INSTITUTE — $45,500 · Arts & CultureBIG SKY FILM INSTITUTEMISSOULA WRITING COLLABORATIVE — $40,275 · Arts & CultureMISSOULA WRITING COLLABORATIVEEXTREME HISTORY PROJECT — $37,000 · Arts & CultureEXTREME HISTORY PROJECTMONTANA HISTORY FOUNDATION — $29,220 · Arts & CultureMISSOULA ART MUSEUM — $26,352 · Arts & CultureFrom The Heart Productions — $25,000 · Arts & CultureELK RIVER ARTS & LECTURES — $23,500 · Arts & Culture+24 more — $252,021 · Arts & Culture+24 moreTHE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA — $86,244 · OtherTHE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANAMSU BILLINGS — $51,619 · OtherMSU BILLINGSALPINE ARTISANS INC — $22,000 · OtherLEARNING WITH MEANING INC — $20,000 · OtherCARTER COUNTY GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY — $19,620 · OtherCITY OF BILLINGS — $19,000 · OtherCHIEF DULL KNIFE COLLEGE — $18,300 · Other+31 more — $296,419 · Other+31 moreTHE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATION — $24,500 · EducationFLATHEAD LIBRARY FOUNDATION — $10,000 · EducationEXPRESS TO SPEAK INC — $8,250 · EducationMERLIN MEDIATION COUNSELING & CONSULTING INC — $23,500 · Human ServicesCenter Pole — $10,000 · Human ServicesBUTTE AMERICA FOUNDATION — $10,000 · Community ImprovementNORTH-MISSOULA COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION — $6,000 · Community ImprovementWORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL OF MONTANA — $14,500 · InternationalMONTANA STATE PARKS FOUNDATION — $7,000 · Recreation & SportsMINT FILM MT — $6,000 · Recreation & Sports
Arts & Culture$604,868Other$533,202Education$42,750Human Services$33,500Community Improvement$16,000International$14,500Recreation & Sports$13,000

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetCROW LANGUAGE CONSORTIUM INC — $68,000 over 3y, 10% of budgetMISSOULA CULTURAL COUNCIL dba ARTS MISSOULA — $58,000 over 5y, 5.4% of budgetBIG SKY FILM INSTITUTE — $45,500 over 3y, 7.3% of budgetMISSOULA WRITING COLLABORATIVE — $40,275 over 3y, 7.7% of budgetEXTREME HISTORY PROJECT — $37,000 over 3y, 16% of budgetMONTANA HISTORY FOUNDATION — $29,220 over 3y, 1.0% of budgetMISSOULA ART MUSEUM — $26,352 over 3y, 1.0% of budgetFrom The Heart Productions — $25,000 over 2y, 0.6% of budgetTHE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATION — $24,500 over 2y, 0.0% of budgetMERLIN MEDIATION COUNSELING & CONSULTING INC — $23,500 over 3y, 17% of budgetELK RIVER ARTS & LECTURES — $23,500 over 3y, 4.1% of budgetALPINE ARTISANS INC — $22,000 over 2y, 14% of budgetLEARNING WITH MEANING INC — $20,000 over 1y, 4.3% of budgetCARTER COUNTY GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY — $19,620 over 1y, 24% of budgetFRIENDS OF THE YELLOWSTONE GATEWAY MUSEUM OF PARK COUNTY INC — $19,000 over 2y, 16% of budgetCHIEF DULL KNIFE COLLEGE — $18,300 over 1y, 0.4% of budgetYELLOWSTONE ART MUSEUM — $17,500 over 2y, 0.5% of budgetBITTER ROOT VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC — $17,000 over 2y, 3.5% of budgetA VOICE ART VISION & OUTREACH IN COMMUNITY EDUCATION — $15,750 over 2y, 25% of budgetWORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL OF MONTANA — $14,500 over 1y, 6.5% of budgetMONTANA ART GALLERY DIRECTORS ASSOC — $11,000 over 1y, 17% of budgetInternational Traditional Games Soc — $10,000 over 1y, 9.0% of budgetBoys and Girls Club of Lodge Grass — $10,000 over 1y, 4.4% of budgetLEWISTOWN ART CENTER — $10,000 over 1y, 7.1% of budgetNORTHWEST MONTANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC — $10,000 over 1y, 4.9% of budgetSCHOOLHOUSE HISTORY AND ART CENTER — $10,000 over 1y, 9.9% of budgetWISE WONDERS CHILDRENS MUSEUM INC — $10,000 over 1y, 3.4% of budgetBOZEMAN ART MUSEUM — $10,000 over 1y, 4.6% of budgetMAPS MEDIA INSTITUTE INC — $10,000 over 1y, 1.7% of budgetMontana Jewish Project — $10,000 over 1y, 3.9% of budgetARTEMIS WILDLIFE FOUNDATION — $10,000 over 2y, 4.6% of budgetThe Paradise Center — $10,000 over 1y, 4.8% of budgetCASCADE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY — $10,000 over 1y, 4.4% of budgetHuntley Project Museum — $10,000 over 1y, 5.5% of budgetAASAISST TO LANGUAGE SOCIETY — $10,000 over 1y, 17% of budgetMAHCHIWMINAHNAHTIK CHIPPEWA AND CREE LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION — $10,000 over 1y, 1.2% of budgetINDEPENDENT FEATURE PROJECT INC — $10,000 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetRANGE RIDERS INC — $10,000 over 1y, 7.5% of budgetFLATHEAD LIBRARY FOUNDATION — $10,000 over 1y, 2.9% of budgetCenter Pole — $10,000 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetUSS MONTANA COMMITTEE INC — $10,000 over 1y, 32% of budgetStillwater Historical Society — $10,000 over 1y, 5.1% of budgetLEWIS & CLARK FOUNDATION — $10,000 over 1y, 3.9% of budgetMONDAK HERITAGE CENTER — $10,000 over 1y, 3.5% of budgetINTERNATIONAL LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION PHOTOGRAPHERS — $10,000 over 1y, 2.3% of budgetFRIENDS OF MONTANA PBS INC — $9,000 over 1y, 0.3% of budgetMONTANA PRESERVATION ALLIANCE INC — $8,500 over 1y, 2.4% of budgetEXPRESS TO SPEAK INC — $8,250 over 1y, 30% of budget
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.

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.

Dennis & Phyllis Wash…Montana History Found…First Interstate Banc…Montana Community Fou…Treacy FoundationThe Greater Montana F…The High Stakes Found…Town Pump Charitable …The Steele-Reese Foun…Potlatch FundM J Murdock Charitabl…First Nations Develop…
Dennis & Phyllis Washington FoundationMT52.3× affinity25 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation · Montana History Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Montana Community Foundation Inc · Treacy Foundation · The Greater Montana Foundation · The High Stakes Foundation · Town Pump Charitable Foundation · The Steele-Reese Foundation Xxxxx1004 · Potlatch Fund · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · First Nations Development Institute

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 Humanities Montana 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.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%3%10%23%40%your share of their income ↑0%25%50%75%100%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    13report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    typical government reliance, FY20–25

    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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 81 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2024, released 2024. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home