How much does McDowell Foundation give?

McDowell Foundation reported 2 grants totaling $505,000 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 13 and 34 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does McDowell Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Environment (66%), Education (10%), Health (6%).

Who are McDowell Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Breakthrough ($41k), World Central Kitchen Inc ($30k), Haven ($26k).

Does McDowell Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 35% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does McDowell Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as McDowell Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Austin Community Foundation Inc, Gulf Coast Community Foundation Inc, Vick Foundation Inc.

Where is McDowell Foundation based?

McDowell Foundation is based in MN.

McDowell Foundation

McDowell Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

McDowell 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.

$505k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$500k

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, FY2017 to 2025.

Environment$704kEducation$108kHealth$61kHuman Services$54kYouth Development$42kPublic Safety & Disaster$32kPhilanthropy$32kArts & Culture$18kOther$0

02FY2025 · 2 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k1 grant · $5k
$250k+1 grant · $500k

$500,000

Median grant

States reached

$1.5M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
AMERICAN RIVERS ANGLERS FUND	$500,000
CENTER FOR THE ARTS	$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 (FY17–24, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-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.

83%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$887k · 35 repeat orgs$178k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +55% since the first grant, against +25% for those funded once.

35 repeat relationships: 2 still active in FY2025, 33 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$887k

$178k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+55%

+25%

Still filing today

80%

69%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EducationEnvironmentArts & CultureAnimalsPhilanthropyHuman ServicesOther

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

B
BREAKTHROUGH
7× · 2018–2024 · $41k · revenue +159%
H
HAVEN
8× · 2017–2024 · $26k · revenue +91%
GV
GALLATIN VALLEY LAND TRUST
7× · 2017–2024 · $18k · revenue +234%

Funded once

WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC
one grant, 2022 · $30k · revenue -40%
ML
MN LAND TRUST
one grant, 2020 · $25k
UB
URBAN BOATBUILDERS INCgraduated
one grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +26%

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.

Tucson Audubon Society

Inspire people to enjoy and protect birds through recreation, education, conservation, and restoration of the environment, upon which we all depend.

Animals

Cowiche Canyon Conservancy

Protecting our shrub-steppe and connecting people to this vanishing landscape.

—

Conservation Legacy

Conservation legacy engages future leaders who protect, restore, and enhance our nation's lands through community-based service.in 2024, conservation legacy engaged 2,524 participants who completed over 1.5 million service hours on public…

Youth Development

Great Peninsula Conservancy

Preserve in perpetuity the natural habitats, rural landscapes, and open spaces of the great peninsula of washington's puget sound.

Environment

Los Padres Forestwatch Inc

Los padres forestwatch protects the los padres national forest and the carrizo plain national monument through education, advocacy, and when necessary, legal action for the benefit of our communities, climate and future generations.

Environment

Balboa Park Conservancy

Balboa Park Conservancy (the Conservancy) was organized on November 3, 1923. The Conservancy is the City of San Diegos (the City) partner and advocated for the greater good of Balboa Park (the Park). The Conservancy collaborated with and…

—

The South Fork Conservancy Incorporated

The mission of the South Fork Conservancy is to restore and preserve habitat along the tributaries of Peachtree Creek. We give the community access to these healthy, restored greenspaces by designing, building and maintaining nature trails.

Environment

Land Conservancy of West Michigan

Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…

Environment

The Trail Conservancy

To protect, enhance and connect the Ann and Roy Butler Trail at Lady Bird Lake for the benefit of all.

Environment

Cuenca Los Ojos

Cuenca los ojos works to preserve and restore the biodiversity of the us/mexican borderlands through land protection, habitat restoration and wildlife reintroduction.

Environment

Coastal Prairie Conservancy

The Coastal Prairie Conservancy (CPC) works to sustain a resilient Texas by preserving coastal prairies, wetlands, farms, and ranches to benefit people and wildlife forever. Continued on Schedule OCPC conserves land, restores and enhances…

Environment

Wildcoast

The mission of wildcoast is to conserve coastal and marine ecosystems and address climate change through natural solutions. our staff is dedicated to conserving threatened and endangered coastlines and wildlife in california and mexico.…

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Save the Manatee Club Inc; the most unlike its peers is Northside Boxing Club Inc. 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

53 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. 53 of the 69 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)

52/53

Grantees still filing

35/53

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$803,500Education$83,250Environment$66,500Youth Development$36,000International$33,500Philanthropy$33,500Health$18,250

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.

Austin Community Foundation IncTX21.8× affinity9 shared granteesties to 8 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Austin Community Foundation Inc · Gulf Coast Community Foundation Inc · Vick Foundation Inc · The Cruz Family Foundation Inc · McCrea Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · The Seidler Foundation · The Webber Family Foundation · Longview Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · Community Foundation of Greater Memphis Inc · The Dorothy and Jim Kronzer 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 McDowell Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from McDowell Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

9get no government money at all

13report 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.

Play a game based on McDowell’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