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· Private foundation

John and Elaine French Family Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$260k
Granted FY2025still arriving
6
Grants FY2025still arriving
3
States reached
$75k
Largest
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2025.

Environment$1.5MEducation$25kHousing & Shelter$10k
02FY2025 · 6 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

  • $10k–50k3 grants · $75k
  • $50k–250k3 grants · $185k
$55,000
Median grant
3
States reached
$3.8M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Earth Justice$75,000
Idaho Conservation League$55,000
Advocates for the West$55,000
LCV Education Fund$25,000
Wood River Land Trust$25,000
The Nature Conservancy of Idaho$25,000
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 77% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%The Nature Conservancy of Idaho: $25k → 7%ICL Climate Fund: $25k → 8%Grid Alternatives: $10k → 10%Earthjustice: $75k → 10%League of Conservation Voters Educa: $50k → 14%The Nature Conservancy of Washingto: $10k → 9%Wood River Land Trust: $25k → 7%Earth Justice: $75k → 10%League of Conservation Voters Educa: $50k → 14%The Nature Conservancy of Idaho: $25k → 7%Earthjustice: $75k → 10%League of Conservation Voters Educa: $50k → 14%Wood River Land Trust: $10k → 7%Earthjustice: $50k → 10%League of Conservation Voters Educa: $50k → 14%The Nature Conservancy of Idaho: $10k → 7%Earthjustice: $50k → 10%League of Conservation Voters Educa: $50k → 14%Wood River Land Trust: $10k → 7%Earthjustice: $50k → 10%LCV Education Fund: $25k → 14%Wood River Land Trust: $10k → 7%The Nature Conservancy of Idaho: $10k → 7%Wood River Land Trust: $10k → 7%The Nature Conservancy of Idaho: $10k → 7%Wood River Land Trust: $10k → 7%The Nature Conservancy of Idaho: $10k → 7%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
04

Where the work is directed

The same grants placed two ways: where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose sends the money.

About 7% of John and Elaine French Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address.

John and Elaine French Family Foundationlessmore of its giving
Placed by recipient address
How this is measured
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the funder’s own 990 grant descriptions.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

95%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$1.4M · 5 repeat orgs$70k to everyone else

5 repeat relationships: 4 still active in FY2025, 1 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

5
3

Total granted

$1.4M
$45k

Still filing today

80%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k went to new ones.

50%100%’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • EARTHJUSTICE
    6× · 2020–2025 · $375k · revenue +16%
  • IC
    IDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE INC
    6× · 2020–2025 · $335k · revenue +55%
  • AF
    ADVOCATES FOR THE WEST INC
    6× · 2020–2025 · $315k · revenue +97%

Funded once

  • IC
    ICL Climate Fund
    one grant, 2024 · $25k
  • TN
    The Nature Conservancy of Washingto
    one grant, 2020 · $10k
  • GA
    Grid Alternatives
    one grant, 2021 · $10k
How this is measured

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

04Its field
05the grantee network

5 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 5 of the 10 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
3
Early backer (in before they grew)
5/5
Grantees still filing
5/5
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

EARTHJUSTICE: $375,000 · EnvironmentEARTHJUSTICEADVOCATES FOR THE WEST INC: $315,000 · EnvironmentADVOCATES FOR THE WEST INCWOOD RIVER LAND TRUST CO: $75,000 · EnvironmentWOOD RIVER LAND TRUST COIDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE INC: $335,000 · OtherIDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE INCLeague of Conservation Voters Educa: $250,000 · OtherLeague of Conservation Voters EducaTHE NATURE CONSERVANCY: $90,000 · OtherTHE NATURE CONSERVANCYLCV Education Fund: $25,000 · OtherICL Climate Fund: $25,000 · Other+2 more: $20,000 · Other
Environment$765,000Other$745,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetEARTHJUSTICE: $375,000 over 6y, 0.1% of budgetIDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE INC: $335,000 over 6y, 2.5% of budgetADVOCATES FOR THE WEST INC: $315,000 over 6y, 2.8% of budgetTHE NATURE CONSERVANCY: $90,000 over 6y, 0.0% of budgetWOOD RIVER LAND TRUST CO: $75,000 over 6y, 0.4% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds EARTHJUSTICE ↗
  • Who funds IDAHO CONSERVATION LEAGUE INC ↗
  • Who funds ADVOCATES FOR THE WEST INC ↗
  • Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
  • Who funds WOOD RIVER LAND TRUST CO ↗

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization John and Elaine French Family Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from John and Elaine French Family Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%10%20%30%40%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–40%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 10 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its 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.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

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