How much does Maki Foundation give?

Maki Foundation reported 51 grants totaling $236,900 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 51 and 64 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does Maki Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Environment (80%), Animals (8%), Community Improvement (3%).

Who are Maki Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Energy & Conservation Law ($50k), High Country Conservation Advocates ($48k), Aspen Journalism ($47k).

Does Maki Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 14% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Maki Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as Maki Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Patagoniaorg, The New-Land Foundation Inc, Resources Legacy Fund.

Where is Maki Foundation based?

Maki Foundation is based in CO.

Maki Foundation

Maki Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Maki Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$237k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$7k

Largest

01What it funds

0198% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Environment$1.6MAnimals$151kCommunity Improvement$63kArts & Culture$47kPublic Benefit$28kRecreation & Sports$21kCivil Rights$10kFood & Nutrition$10kOther$0

02FY2025 · 51 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$5,000

Median grant

States reached

$5.0M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
Aspen Journalism	$7,000
Energy & Conservation Law	$6,000
Great Old Broads for Wilderness	$6,000
Sierra Club Foundation Wyoming	$6,000
Citizens for a Healthy Community	$5,000
New Mexico Environmental Law Center	$5,000
Western Leaders Network	$5,000
Great Basin Resource Watch	$5,000
Wilderness Watch	$5,000
Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL)	$5,000
Western Slope Conservation Center	$5,000
Western Colorado Alliance	$5,000
Advocates for the West	$5,000
Wild Connections	$5,000
Gateway Conservation Alliance	$5,000

02The need

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:

Its human-services grants (FY17–25, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

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.

Which US states its grants reach

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.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

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

94%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$1.8M · 86 repeat orgs$119k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +66% since the first grant, against +26% for those funded once.

86 repeat relationships: 42 still active in FY2025, 44 since wound down; 9 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$1.8M

$84k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+66%

+26%

Still filing today

77%

48%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EnvironmentAnimalsHuman ServicesArts & CultureEducationCommunity ImprovementOther

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

EC
ENERGY & CONSERVATION LAW
9× · 2017–2025 · $50k · revenue +70%
AJ
Aspen Journalism
7× · 2019–2025 · $47k · revenue +54%
WM
WESTERN MINING ACTION PROJECT INC
9× · 2017–2025 · $45k · revenue +74%

Funded once

US
Utah State University Beaver Ecology & Relocation Center
one grant, 2022 · $5k
UW
Utah Wildlife Federation
one grant, 2023 · $5k
AF
ALLIANCE FOR THE WILD ROCKIES INC
one grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue 0%

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

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Gallatin Wildlife Association

Promote research and actions to save wildlife.

Animals

Wyoming Wildlife Advocates

To promote science-based wildlife management that fosters ecosystem health and dynamic equilibrium between species throughout the state of wyoming.

Animals

Native Ecosystems Council

Promote wildlife habitat

Environment

Living Rivers

Living rivers promotes river restoration through mobilization by articulating conservation and alternative management strategies to the public. seeking to revive the natural habitat and spirit of rivers by undoing the extensive damage done…

Environment

Upper Colorado River Alliance

Environment

Upper Missouri Waterkeeper Inc

Upper missouri waterkeeper protects fishable, swimmable, drinkable water throughout the 25,000 square miles of montana's upper missouri river basin of montana. to accomplish this mission we actively engage with citizens, stakeholders and…

Education

Wild Earth Society Incorporated

Wildlands Network works to reconnect, restore and rewild North America so that life-in all its diversity-can thrive.

Arts & Culture

Santa Fe Forest Coalition

Educate the public on forest conservation issues in New Mexico

Environment

Idaho Conservation League Inc

Icl's mission is to create a conservation community and pragmatic, enduring solutions that protect and restore the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the land and wildlife you love.

—

Utah Public Lands Alliance

Education

CalWild

The California Wilderness Coalition protects the natural landscapes that make California unique, providing clean air and water, a home to wildlife, and a place for recreation and spiritual renewal.

—

Wilderness Conservation Foundation

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Alliance for the Wild Rockies Inc; the most unlike its peers is Mosquito Range Heritage Initiative. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

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

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 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 84 of the 122 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.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

82/84

Grantees still filing

61/84

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Environment$1,056,200Other$593,000Animals$88,500Arts & Culture$77,500Human Services$62,000Community Improvement$46,000Education$16,000

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

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.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

PatagoniaorgCA108.5× affinity64 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Patagoniaorg · The New-Land Foundation Inc · Resources Legacy Fund · The Wilderness Society · Western Conservation Foundation · Wilburforce Foundation · The Pew Charitable Trusts · Colorado Gives Foundation · National Forest Foundation · The Wolcott Family Foundation · Clif Family Foundation · Conservation Lands Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

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

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

17report 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

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Maki Foundation?

Find your warmest path to Maki 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.

Play a game based on Maki’s filings →

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