· Public charity
Living Desert The
The living desert mission is to enhance desert conservation through preservation, education and appreciation.
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.
The 9 grants below total $197,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $464,689 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $267,189 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 · FY2025
- $10k–50k8 grants · $113k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $85k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC | $85,000 |
| WILDLIFE PROTECTION SOLUTIONS | $20,000 |
| SAVING SLOWPOKE INCORPORATED | $20,000 |
| APPLIED ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| WILD NATURE INSTITUTE | $12,500 |
| CARNIVORES LIVELIHOODS AND LANDSCAPES USA | $10,000 |
| NATIONAL MARINE MAMMAL FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| USGS SOUTHWESTERN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE CENTER | $10,000 |
| GREATER LOS ANGELES ZOO ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 46% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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
Grants abroad, by region — $219k on the FY2025 return
Schedule F, as filed: 3 regions. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: CONSERVATION SUPPORT - TRANSFERS TO MCI (PASS THRU OF FUNDS FROM EARTHWATCH AND TMU AND GENERAL FUNDING BY TLD)
Stated purpose: CONSERVATION SUPPORT - DONATIONS TO BUSH BABIES AND BMAPU
Stated purpose: CONSERVATION SUPPORT - ANNUAL DONATION
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 15% of Living Desert The’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 56% of the giving stays in CA; read by stated purpose it is 41% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +43% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 4 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, 65% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $70k 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
- WCWILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC8× · 2018–2025 · $308k · revenue +296%
- WNWILD NATURE INSTITUTE6× · 2018–2025 · $53k · revenue +43%
- OCONEFUTURE COACHELLA VALLEY3× · 2020–2024 · $43k · revenue +246%
Funded once
- RARiverside Arts Councilone grant, 2020 · $40k · revenue -4%
- TATIMOTHY A SHIELDS HARDSHELL LABSone grant, 2024 · $20k
- TITHE INTERNATIONAL RHINO FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +14%
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
To safeguard large carnivores, their prey, and habitat in zambia through applied research, conservation, and education.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Protecting india's precious wildlife from poaching, habitat loss, and human exploitation since 1995.
Wildlife conservation global, inc. operates the okapi conservation project (ocp) which works in the democratic republic of the congo with the institute in congo for the conservation of nature (iccn) and local communities throughout the…
Iucn-us fund builds bridges between us donors and iucn by catalyzing, accelerating, funding and promoting iucn's work - conserving nature and natural resources in the united states and throughout the world.
Awf's mission is to ensure wildlife and wild lands thrive in modern africa. we work to equip african governments, institutions, business, and communities with the tools, insights, and support they need to define, own, and realize a…
The Fossey Fund is dedicated to the conservation and study of gorillas in Africa through a successful, people-centered approach: 1) Providing daily protection to gorillas, 2) Scientific research providing critical data on gorillas and…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Wildlife conservation, research and education.
Panthera's mission is the conservation of the world's 40 wild cat species, many of which are endangered or threatened. panthera develops, implements and oversees wild cat conservation strategies on a global scale.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wildlife Conservation Network Inc and the most unlike its peers is Carnivores Livelihoods and Landscapes. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 18 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 25 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 WILDLIFE CONSERVATION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds WILD NATURE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SAHARA CONSERVATION FUND ↗
- Who funds GREATER LOS ANGELES ZOOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds ONEFUTURE COACHELLA VALLEY ↗
- Who funds Riverside Arts Council ↗
- Who funds CARNIVORES LIVELIHOODS AND LANDSCAPES ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE PROTECTION SOLUTIONS ↗
- Who funds THE INTERNATIONAL RHINO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Cheetah Conservation Fund ↗
- Who funds Chicago Zoological Society ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN CONSERVATION CENTRE US ↗
- Who funds SPECIES360 ↗
- Who funds National Marine Mammal Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds WILLAMETTE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL CONSERVATION NETWORK ↗
- Who funds GIRAFFE CONSERVATION FOUNDATION USA ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds NORTH CAROLINA ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
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: Zoological Society of San Diego · Dallas Zoo Management Inc · Detroit Zoological Society · Columbus Zoological Park Association · American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Network for Good · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Living Desert The 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.
- Giraffe Conservation Foundation Usa — 2% of income from government
- Willamette University — 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.