· Private foundation
Janet Q Lawson 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
- Under $10k21 grants · $99k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $458k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $578k
- $250k+4 grants · $2.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Utah State University | $1,381,000 |
| Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc | $840,000 |
| Entrada Cultural Center | $280,000 |
| Intermountain Foundation at Primary Children's Hospital | $255,000 |
| Ballet West | $130,000 |
| YMCA of Northern Utah | $110,000 |
| Salt Lake Tribune | $100,000 |
| Huntsman Mental Health Institute | $100,000 |
| Utah Symphony Utah Opera | $75,000 |
| University of Utah | $62,500 |
| Friends of Tracy Aviary | $45,000 |
| Nature Conservancy in Utah | $42,500 |
| Utah's Hogle Zoo | $40,000 |
| Neighborhood House | $35,000 |
| Girl Scouts of Utah | $35,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 2% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +53% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
58 repeat relationships — 43 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 9 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; $464k 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
- NHNeighborhood House Association5× · 2020–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +48%
- USUTAH SYMPHONY & OPERA5× · 2020–2024 · $305k · revenue +39%
- BWBALLET WEST5× · 2020–2024 · $300k · revenue +88%
Funded once
- LCLISTENERS COMMUNITY RADIO OF UTAH INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +27%
OREGON FOOD BANKone grant, 2020 · $35k · revenue +7%- PHPROJECT HAWAII INCone grant, 2021 · $19k · revenue -8%
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.
Utah foundation's mission is to produce objective, thorough and well- reasoned research and analysis that promotes the effective use of public resources, a thriving economy, a well-prepared workforce and a high quality of life for utahns.…
Heal utah's mission is to protect utah's environment and its people by promoting clean air, clean energy, and comprehensive solutions to radioactive and toxic waste.
Utah Humanities collaborates with libraries, museums, historical societies, schools, colleges, and cultural and civic groups; provides capacity-building opportunities for volunteers and professionals in the cultural sector; presents…
Utah water ways promotes water conservation through collaboration between government, non-profit groups, and private sector partners and empowers the public to be wise stewards of this critical shared resource.
Utah's promise (up) is committed to 100% of kids and families thriving. we unify leaders, partners, communities and systems to achieve that promise.
Summit land conservancy works with utah communities to conserve land and water for the benefit of the people and nature.
To advance sustainable health care solutions for underserved utahns through better access, education, and public policy.
Utah film center inspires and engages diverse audiences to initiate conversation and community building through curated film exhibition, educational programs, and artist support.
The organization's mission is to keep the past alive, not only for preservation, but to inspire and provoke a more creative present and sustainable future.
We inspire people to explore, discover and learn about earth's diverse ecosystems.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is National Ability Center and the most unlike its peers is Richard W Erickson 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 33 years old; the field is 11. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 29% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
60 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. 60 of the 94 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 Neighborhood House Association ↗
- Who funds Renaissance Charitable Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ↗
- Who funds UTAH SYMPHONY & OPERA ↗
- Who funds THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE INC ↗
- Who funds BALLET WEST ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF UTAH ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF TRACY AVIARY ↗
- Who funds Young Mens Christian Association Of Northern Utah ↗
- Who funds THE MCGILLIS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Black Mesa Trust inc ↗
- Who funds YOUTH GARDEN PROJECT ↗
- Who funds MOAB MUSIC FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds LISTENERS COMMUNITY RADIO OF UTAH INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF RESERVATIONS ↗
- Who funds UTAH FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds BOUNTIFUL COMMUNITY FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds MOAB FREE HEALTH CLINIC ↗
- Who funds OREGON FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds WASATCH COMMUNITY GARDENS ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF ARCHES&CANYONLANDS PARKS BATES WILSON LEGACY FUND ↗
- Who funds THE JARED PRESCOTT CHARITABLE TRUST ↗
- Who funds BOSTON BOOK FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S CENTER UTAH ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEADOWBROOK SCHOOL OF WESTON INCORPORATED ↗
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: Sorenson Legacy Foundation · George S and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation · Larry H Miller and Gail Miller Family Foundation · The Community Foundation of Utah · Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation · Lawrence & Janet Dee Foundation · SJ and Jessie E Quinney Foundation · Willard L Eccles Charitable Foundation · Ihc Health Services Inc · McCarthey Family Foundation · Palladium Foundation · The Call 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 Janet Q Lawson 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.
- Oregon Food Bank — 21% of income from government
- Planned Parenthood of the Columbia Willamette Inc — 7% of income from government
- Boston Book Festival Inc — 2% of income from government
- The Trustees of Reservations — 2% of income from government
- New England Conservatory of Music — 1% 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 Janet Q Lawson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Janet Q Lawson 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.