· Private foundation
Mary Garner Esary Trust
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
98% of Mary Garner Esary Trust’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Blue Mountain Community Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 11 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year Mary Garner Esary Trust named its own grantees at scale: 28 organizations, $143k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2021
- Under $10k45 grants · $116k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $28k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WALLA WALLA PUBLIC SCHOOL | $17,500 |
| WALLA WALLA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUND | $10,000 |
| WALLA WALLA PUBLIC SCHOOL | $7,500 |
| WALLA WALLA PICKLEBALL ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| WALLA WALLA CATHOLIC SCHOOLS | $5,000 |
| FORT WALLA WALLA MUSEUM | $4,000 |
| CITY OF WALLA WALLA | $4,000 |
| PAGE AHEAD | $4,000 |
| THE LITTLE THEATRE OF WALLA WALLA | $3,500 |
| CAMPFIRE WALLA WALLA | $3,500 |
| CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY | $3,500 |
| WALLA WALLA SYMPHONY | $3,500 |
| TRILOGY RECOVERY COMMUNITY | $3,500 |
| COMMUNITY COUNCIL | $3,500 |
| EARLY LIFE SPEECH & LANGUAGE | $3,000 |
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 (FY20–21, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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 +41% since the first grant, against -19% for the ones you funded once.
46 repeat relationships — 36 still active in FY2021, 10 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- WWWALLA WALLA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION5× · 2017–2021 · $56k · revenue +209%
- PAPAGE AHEAD CHILDRENS LITERACY PRGM8× · 2017–2024 · $33k · revenue +37%
- BMBLUE MOUNTAIN ACTION COUNCIL6× · 2017–2024 · $32k · revenue +141%
Funded once
- PLPACIFIC LITTLE LEAGUEone grant, 2020 · $3k
- BMBLUE MT COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $2k
- KHKirkman House Museumone grant, 2019 · $2k · revenue -19%
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.
The walla walla valley chamber of commerce is a member-focused organization and community partner that fosters a sustainable, healthy and vibrant economic environment through business promotion, advocacy, education and services.
The Washington Museum Association was established to represent and serve museums of all types and sizes throughout Washington State
Our mission is to provide safe/secure low-barrier shelter and food to any adult in need in the Walla Walla region. Our hope is to build upon this foundation to stabilize people's lives while helping them to become self-sufficient. We do…
To transform the Fort Walla Walla Amphitheater into a nationally recognized regional theater, while enhancing the cultural identity of Walla Walla through locally produced performing arts events and accessible educational opportunities.
We partner with our community to make good health possible for all. wallace serves individuals and families who face barriers to care throughout the east multnomah county in the portland metropolitan area.
To provide services and assistance to senior citizens
To promote the arts in wallowa county, oregon.
The mission of the walla walla basin watershed council is to protect the resources of the walla walla watershed, deal with issues in advance of resource degredation and enhance the overall health of the watershed, while also protecting as…
to provide compassionate care to patients in the final stages of life and support for their loved ones and caregivers.
Our mission is to protect the rural nature of Wallowa County by working cooperatively with private landowners,indigenous people, local communities and governmental entities to conserve land.
WCSC connects and empowers older adults to live happy, healthy, and engaged lives.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fort Walla Walla Museum Walla Walla Valley Historical Society and the most unlike its peers is Lillie Rice Center. 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 39 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 6% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 70 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 BLUE MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WALLA WALLA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PAGE AHEAD CHILDRENS LITERACY PRGM ↗
- Who funds BLUE MOUNTAIN ACTION COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Trilogy Recovery Community ↗
- Who funds Fort Walla Walla Museum Walla Walla Valley Historical Society ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CHILDREN OF WALLA WALLA ↗
- Who funds Walla Walla Symphony Society Inc ↗
- Who funds Little Theatre of Walla Walla ↗
- Who funds BLUE MOUNTAIN LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE ST MARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Helpline ↗
- Who funds CAMP FIRE WALLA WALLA ↗
- Who funds VALLEY RESIDENTIAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Lillie Rice Center ↗
- Who funds Carnegie Picture Lab ↗
- Who funds WALLA WALLA PICKLEBALL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER 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: Blue Mountain Community Foundation · Clara and Art Bald Trust · Estate of Joseph L Stubblefield · Sherwood Trust · Yancey P Winans Testamentary Trust · George T Welch Testamentary Trust · Bonnie & Clifford Braden Foundation · United Way of the Blue Mountains · The Sunny Day Charitable Foundation · Wells Charitable Trust · Artsfund · Cape Flattery 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 Mary Garner Esary Trust 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.
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.
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How do I get to Mary Garner Esary Trust?
Find your warmest path to Mary Garner Esary Trust 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.