· Private foundation
John and Linda Shelk Foundation Inc
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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $8k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $149k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $60k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST CHARLES FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| HIGH DESERT MUSEUM | $30,000 |
| WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
| CROOK COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| SUSTAINABLE NORTHWEST | $15,000 |
| OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $14,200 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| ST VINCENT DE PAUL | $10,000 |
| WORLD FORESTRY CENTER | $10,000 |
| PRINEVILLE SENIOR CENTER | $10,000 |
| DESCHUTES LAND TRUST | $10,000 |
| REDMOND SENIOR CENTER | $5,000 |
| CROOK COUNTY PARKS AND REC DISTRICT | $2,000 |
| OREGON PUBLIC BROADCASTING | $1,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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 +60% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $38k 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
- OHOREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY9× · 2017–2025 · $225k · revenue +38%
WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY6× · 2018–2025 · $200k · revenue +32%
HIGH DESERT MUSEUM5× · 2018–2025 · $57k · revenue +228%
Funded once
- PIPartners in Care - Hospice Houseone grant, 2021 · $10k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $10k
- JAJUNIPER ARTS COUNCIL INCone grant, 2019 · $4k
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.
Oregon Wild works to protect and restore Oregon's wildlands, wildlife and waters as an enduring legacy for future generations.
Oregon agricultural trust partners with farmers and ranchers to protect agricultural lands for the benefit of oregons economy, communities, and landscapes.
To conserve and enhance land in southern oregon to sustain our human and natural communities forever.
We protect, connect and restore wildlands and wildlife from the washington coast to the british columbia rockies.
The Coast Fork Willamette Watershed Council is a local nonprofit organization that strives to enhance and restore habitat for fish and wildlife our community and for future generations. Our Board of Directors consists of seven members with…
Public charity watershed council Clackamas County, OR
The council is organized to foster partnerships for clean water, healthy streams, and abundant fisheries in the Clackamas Watershed
Rogue Climate's mission is to empower Southern Oregon communities most impacted by climate change including low-income, rural, youth, seniors & communities of color, to win climate justice by organizing for clean energy, sustainable jobs &…
Western rivers conservancy's mission is to protect outstanding river ecosystems in the western united states. continued on schedule o.we acquire land to conserve critical habitat, provide public access for compatible use and enjoyment, and…
Oregon Justice Network is an alliance built and staffed by criminal legal system impacted people advocating for the well-being of people affected or at-risk of being affected by carceral systems. Our work centers around restorative…
To foster community pride and involvement in the oregon zoo and to secure financial support for the zoo's conservation, education and animal well-being programs.
Trailkeepers of oregon is a non-profit organization whose mission is to protect and enhance the oregon hiking experience through stewardship, advocacy, outreach and education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is 1000 Friends of Oregon and the most unlike its peers is Bridge Builders Leadership Initiative. 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 32 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 57 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 OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds St Charles Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds HIGH DESERT MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE NORTHWEST ↗
- Who funds WORLD FORESTRY CENTER ↗
- Who funds Deschutes Land Trust ↗
- Who funds CROOK COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds MOUNTAINSTAR FAMILY RELIEF NURSERY ↗
- Who funds HEART OF GRANT COUNTY ↗
- Who funds DESCHUTES RIVER CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds KIWANIS CLUB OF PRINEVILLE ↗
- Who funds OREGON NEWSPAPERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FOUR RIVERS CULTURAL CENTER AND MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ENDURANCE RIDE CONFERENCE ↗
- Who funds CASA OF JACKSON COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds Central Oregon Trail Alliance ↗
- Who funds CROOK COUNTY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BRIDGE BUILDERS LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds Family Access Network Foundation ↗
- Who funds SAVING GRACE ↗
- Who funds GRANT COUNTY LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE OREGON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
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 · The Roundhouse Foundation · The Ford Family Foundation · Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Meyer Memorial Trust · The Autzen Foundation · The Anjulicia Foundation · Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust · Aria Foundation Co Tg Tax & Accounting Services LLC · Ronald W Naito Md Foundation · The Collins 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 John and Linda Shelk Foundation Inc 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.
- Deschutes River Conservancy — 100% of income from government
- Mountainstar Family Relief Nursery — 60% of income from government
- Heart of Grant County — 54% of income from government
- Saving Grace — 48% of income from government
- Deschutes Land Trust — 46% of income from government
- High Desert Museum — 11% of income from government
- Oregon Historical Society — 10% of income from government
- Sustainable Northwest — 5% of income from government
- The Oregon Community Foundation — 2% of income from government
- Frontier Casa — 2% of income from government
- Crook County Foundation — 2% of income from government
- Willamette University — 1% of income from government
- Central Oregon Trail Alliance — 1% of income from government
- Oregon Public Broadcasting — 1% of income from government
- Casa of Jackson County Inc — 0% 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 John and Linda Shelk Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to John and Linda Shelk Foundation Inc 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.