· Community foundation
Montana Community Foundation Inc
To create a culture of giving so montana communities can flourish.
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 316 grants below total $7,745,287 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $10,809,611 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $3,064,324 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
- Under $10k94 grants · $667k
- $10k–50k188 grants · $3.7M
- $50k–250k31 grants · $2.3M
- $250k+3 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SOUTHEASTERN MONTANA DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION | $441,900 |
| SOWERS INTERNATIONAL | $400,000 |
| WEST YELLOWSTONE FOUNDATION | $252,806 |
| MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $152,180 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATION | $127,356 |
| SCHOOLHOUSE HISTORY & ART CENTER | $117,456 |
| HEALTHY MOTHERS HEALTHY BABIES - THE MONTANA COALITION | $106,048 |
| SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS OF MONTANA | $103,087 |
| ELIZABETH SCOTT WELLNESS INITIATIVE | $103,014 |
| WESTERN MONTANA CREATIVE INITIATIVES | $100,500 |
| CENTER FOR RESTORATIVE YOUTH JUSTICE | $100,000 |
| GREATER POLSON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC | $97,408 |
| YELLOWSTONE BOYS AND GIRLS RANCH FOUNDATION INC | $82,874 |
| SCHOOL COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL | $81,299 |
| BRIDGERCARE | $79,288 |
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 (FY17–25, $3.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 27% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 7% of Montana Community Foundation Inc’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, 97% of the giving stays in MT; read by stated purpose it is 95% — 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 +29% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
300 repeat relationships — 225 still active in FY2025, 75 since wound down; 76 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.1M 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
- DMDAHL MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE ASSOCIATION INC4× · 2022–2025 · $1.0M · revenue +9%
- MRMONTANA RESCUE MISSION7× · 2018–2025 · $523k · revenue +63%
- GFGREAT FALLS SYMPHONY ASSOC INC9× · 2017–2025 · $520k · revenue +43%
Funded once
- RHRural Health Development Incgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $325k · revenue +26% · 31% of their budget
- TFTHE FOUNDATION FOR THE DIOCESE OF HELENA INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $300k · revenue +131%
- CCCommunity Crisis Center LLCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $164k · revenue +86%
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 montana state parks foundation raises private support to enhance the visitors experience and build advocates for montanas state parks and recreation heritage.
The mblc exists to encourage and enact business-friendly policies that create good-paying jobs and make montana a better place to live. the primary purpose of the mblc is to educate the public on important business issues, enable citizens…
To create and sustain an optimal business climate, business prosperity and a strong montana economy through advocacy, education and collaboration, working to provide an empowered and educated workforce, reduce business growth obstacles,…
Montana hospital association is the principal advocate for the interests of members in their efforts to improve the health status of the communities they serve.
A partnership of nonprofit groups devoted to improving the quality of life throughout Montana.
To promote public policy solutions that provide increased access to economic opportunities, greater individual freedoms and encourage greater participation in public matters by providing research and recommendation on public policy
Working Montanans' mission is to advocate for an economy that works for working people and other critical issues.
Serving as the voice of business, the big sky chamber of commerce champions a healthy economy and works collaboratively with community stakeholders as a conveyor and a catalyst to improve the overall quality of life in the region.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bighorn Valley Health Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is Keep Miles City Beautiful. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 32 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
467 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. 467 of the 660 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 WEST YELLOWSTONE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DAHL MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEASTERN MONTANA DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER POLSON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MONTANA RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds GREAT FALLS SYMPHONY ASSOC INC ↗
- Who funds STANFORD OPEN ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE BOYS AND GIRLS RANCH FOUNDAT ↗
- Who funds American Indian Institute ↗
- Who funds HELENA AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds VALLEY COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds School Community Development Council ↗
- Who funds SOWERS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds ALBERTA BAIR THEATER CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE MYRNA LOY ↗
- Who funds MONTANA PROFESSIONAL TEACHING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAE INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF THE NORTHERN CHEYENNE NATION ↗
- Who funds Montana State University Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds MISSOULA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Rural Health Development Inc ↗
- Who funds HOLTER MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds BILLINGS DISTRICT COUNCIL OF THE SOCIETY OF ST VIN ↗
- Who funds BILLINGS CATHOLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR THE DIOCESE OF HELENA INC ↗
- Who funds BIGFORK CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS FOUNDATION LTD ↗
- Who funds ZOOTOWN ARTS COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds SEELEY LAKE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE PEOPLES PARTNERS FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF CASCADE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds Intermountain Deaconess Childrens Services ↗
- Who funds WESTERN MONTANA CREATIVE INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds RED LODGE AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HELENA EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies the Montana Coalition 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: Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation · Town Pump Charitable Foundation · Treacy Foundation · Montana Healthcare Foundation · Gianforte Family Charitable Trust · Headwaters Health Foundation of Western Montana · Sample Foundation Inc · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · The High Stakes Foundation · Whitefish Community Foundation Inc · The Steele-Reese Foundation Xxxxx1004 · Op & We Edwards Foundation Inc
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 Montana Community Foundation Inc 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.