Skip to content

· Public charity

Montana Association of Conservation Districts

To serve and support Montanas 58 conservation districts in managing Montanas natural resources through programs, technical expertise, information sharing and other resources

$66k
Granted FY2022
4
Grants FY2022
2
States reached
$23k
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 2022.

Environment$193kAnimals$175kHuman Services$15kCrime & Legal$12kHealth$9k
02FY2022 · 4 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2022

  • Under $10k1 grant · $6k
  • $10k–50k3 grants · $60k
$20,643
Median grant
2
States reached
$1.0M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
BLACKFOOT CHAPTER OF MONTANT$23,010
BIRD CONSERVANCY OF THE ROCKIES$20,643
CARTER COUNTY CONSERVATION$16,513
MONTANA CONSERVATION CORP$6,250
02The need
03

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:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–22) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 94% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%PHEASANTS FOREVER: $109k → 14%MISSOULA COUNTY WEED DISTRICT: $6k → 9%MONTANA CONSERVATION CORP: $25k → 10%RUBY VALLEY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $8k → 10%BASTA RANCHES INC: $15k → 10%LITTLE BEAVER CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $6k → 10%VALLEY COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $17k → 12%PETROLEUM COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $6k → 13%CARTER COUNTY CONSERVATION: $17k → 13%BIG BLACKFOOT CHAPTER OF MONTANA TROUT UNLIMITED: $31k → 16%LAKE COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $6k → 18%BIRD CONSERVANCY OF THE ROCKIES: $29k → 10%MISSOULA COUNTY WEED DISTRICT: $6k → 9%MADISON CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $6k → 10%PETROLEUM COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $6k → 13%CARTER COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $10k → 13%BLACKFOOT CHAPTER OF MONTANT: $23k → 16%LAKE COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $6k → 18%BIRD CONSERVANCY OF THE ROCKIES: $21k → 10%MISSOULA PUBLIC HEALTH: $9k → 9%CARTER COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $10k → 13%BIRD CONSERVANCY OF THE ROCKIES: $16k → 10%0%20%40%50%more need →
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.
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.

65%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$265k · 9 repeat orgs$140k to everyone else

9 repeat relationships: 4 still active in FY2022, 5 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

9
4

Total granted

$265k
$140k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+53%
+75%

Still filing today

33%
25%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2022, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’22
RenewedFirst-time

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

’17’18’19’20’21’22
AnimalsCivil RightsOther
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

  • RM
    ROCKY MOUNTAIN BIRD OBSERVATORY
    3× · 2020–2022 · $66k · revenue +119%
  • BB
    BIG BLACKFOOT CHAPTER OF TROUT UNLIMITED INC
    2× · 2021–2022 · $54k · revenue +15%
  • MC
    MONTANA CONSERVATION CORPS INC
    2× · 2021–2022 · $31k · revenue +53%

Funded once

  • PF
    PHEASANTS FOREVER INCgraduated
    one grant, 2020 · $109k · revenue +75%
  • VC
    VALLEY COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT
    one grant, 2021 · $17k
  • RV
    RUBY VALLEY CONSERVATION DISTRICT
    one grant, 2017 · $8k
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
04the grantee network

4 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. 4 of the 13 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.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
4/4
Grantees still filing
4/4
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

PHEASANTS FOREVER INC: $109,300 · OtherPHEASANTS FOREVER INCCARTER COUNTY CONSERVATION: $31,723 · OtherCARTER COUNTY CONSERVATIONMISSOULA PARKS & RECREATION: $21,539 · OtherMISSOULA PARKS & RECREATIONCARTER COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $19,775 · OtherCARTER COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICTVALLEY COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $16,753 · OtherVALLEY COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICTPETROLEUM COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $16,538 · OtherPETROLEUM COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICTMADISON CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $12,250 · OtherLAKE COUNTY CONSERVATION DISTRICT: $12,250 · Other+2 more: $14,199 · Other+2 moreROCKY MOUNTAIN BIRD OBSERVATORY: $65,914 · AnimalsROCKY MOUNTAIN BIRD OBSERVATORYBIG BLACKFOOT CHAPTER OF TROUT UNLIMITED INC: $54,442 · AnimalsBIG BLACKFOOT CHAPTER OF TROUT UN…MONTANA CONSERVATION CORPS INC: $30,750 · Civil Rights
Other$254,327Animals$120,356Civil Rights$30,750

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

25%50%75%100%$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetPHEASANTS FOREVER INC: $109,300 over 1y, 0.2% of budgetROCKY MOUNTAIN BIRD OBSERVATORY: $65,914 over 3y, 0.4% of budgetBIG BLACKFOOT CHAPTER OF TROUT UNLIMITED INC: $54,442 over 2y, 2.0% of budgetMONTANA CONSERVATION CORPS INC: $30,750 over 2y, 0.3% of budget
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.

  • Who funds PHEASANTS FOREVER INC ↗
  • Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN BIRD OBSERVATORY ↗
  • Who funds BIG BLACKFOOT CHAPTER OF TROUT UNLIMITED INC ↗
  • Who funds MONTANA CONSERVATION CORPS INC ↗

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.

National Fish and Wildlife FoundationDC16.9× affinity6 shared granteesties to 4 of 4Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · The Nature Conservancy · World Wildlife Fund Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund

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 Montana Association of Conservation Districts funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Montana Association of Conservation Districts. Bigger dots raise more.

2025
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%25%50%75%100%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 13 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2022, released 2022. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2022, the most recent year this funder made grants.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Montana Association of Conservation Districts’ filings →

    More from the funding graph