· Public charity
National Forest Foundation
The NATIONAL FOREST FOUNDATION, chartered by congress, engages americans in community-based and national programs that promote the health and public enjoyment of the 193-million acre national forest system, and accepts and administers private gifts of funds and land for the benefit of the national forests.
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 · FY2024
- Under $10k5 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k66 grants · $1.6M
- $50k–250k42 grants · $5.3M
- $250k+12 grants · $6.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CONSERVATION LEGACY | $1,943,515 |
| ECOCULTURE | $602,943 |
| CITY OF GREELEY | $589,153 |
| TROUT UNLIMITED INC | $529,405 |
| TRUCKEE RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL | $512,434 |
| SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS RESERVE | $418,207 |
| ROCKY MOUNTAIN YOUTH CORPS - CO | $315,055 |
| COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY | $284,414 |
| MOUNTAIN COMMUNITIES FIRE SAFE COUNCIL | $283,180 |
| RIO GRANDE RETURN | $281,883 |
| TREE PEOPLE | $268,630 |
| CONFEDERATED SALISH & KOOTENAI TRIBES | $261,399 |
| FRIENDS OF DILLON RANGER DISTRICT | $244,000 |
| THE EMBER ALLIANCE | $240,240 |
| BIG THOMPSON WATERSHED COALITION | $234,988 |
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 (FY17–23, $240k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
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 +78% since the first grant, against +53% for the ones you funded once.
183 repeat relationships — 81 still active in FY2024, 102 since wound down; 43 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.6M 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
CONSERVATION LEGACY8× · 2017–2024 · $4.4M · revenue +161%- RMROCKY MOUNTAIN YOUTH CORPS8× · 2017–2024 · $2.3M · revenue +135%
- ACAmerican Conservation Experience8× · 2017–2024 · $1.8M · revenue +168%
Funded once
- ARAGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICEone grant, 2017 · $890k
- BSBoise State Universityone grant, 2023 · $346k
- GBGREAT BASIN INSTITUTEgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $316k · revenue +201%
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.
Falls Creek Wildlands and Trails FCWT promotes conservation stewardship and responsible recreation in the Falls Creek area through trail development and maintenance environmental restoration and preservation projects and educational…
Enhancing sustainable trail experiences in the Methow Valley.
Cascadia wildlands defends and restores cacasia's wild ecosystems in the forests,in the courts, and in the streets. we envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and…
Working to restore the watersheds, wilderness, and wildlife in the high sierra nevada following the john muir trail (est. 1915) for all life in california.
Educate the public on forest conservation issues in New Mexico
Promoting Responsible Recreation and Environmental Stewardship
The mission of The Blackfoot Challenge is to coordinate efforts that will conserve and enhance the natural resources and rural way of life in the Blackfoot Watershed for present and future generations.
Rocky mountain wild works to protect, connect, and restore wildlife and wild lands in the southern rocky mountain region. we work to secure the biodiversity of the mountains, plains, and desert ecosystems of colorado, wyoming, utah, and…
CSERC protects water, wildlife, and wild places of the Northern Yosemite region.
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.
To provide science-based strategies for wildlife and land conservation.
Promote wildlife habitat
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Trails 2000 Inc and the most unlike its peers is Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership. 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 27 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
277 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. 277 of the 329 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 CONSERVATION LEGACY ↗
- Who funds THE WETLANDS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN YOUTH CORPS ↗
- Who funds American Conservation Experience ↗
- Who funds COLORADO FOURTEENERS INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds Friends of the Dillon Ranger District ↗
- Who funds RANCHO SANTA ANA BOTANIC GARDEN ↗
- Who funds TROUT UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ECOCULTURE ↗
- Who funds WILDLANDS RESTORATION VOLUNTEERS ↗
- Who funds Vail Valley Mountain Bike Association ↗
- Who funds LOS ANGELES CONSERVATION CORPS ↗
- Who funds Rocky Mountain Field Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS RESERVE INC ↗
- Who funds Truckee River Watershed Council ↗
- Who funds RIO GRANDE RETURN ↗
- Who funds TREEPEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds COTTONWOOD CANYONS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MOUNTAINS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE LONGLEAF ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds YEAR ONE INC ↗
- Who funds WALKING MOUNTAINS ↗
- Who funds WHITE MOUNTAIN TRAIL COLLECTIVE ↗
- Who funds BIG THOMPSON WATERSHED COALITION ↗
- Who funds Mountain Communities Fire Safe Council ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION CORPS OF LONG BEACH ↗
- Who funds THE FRESHWATER TRUST ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEERS FOR OUTDOOR COLORADO ↗
- Who funds SITKA CONSERVATION SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds THE STUDENT CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds COALITION FOR THE POUDRE RIVER WATERSHED ↗
- Who funds GREAT BASIN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds CRESTED BUTTE MOUNTAIN BIKE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE FOREST STEWARDS GUILD ↗
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: National Wilderness Stewardship Alliance · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · Patagoniaorg · Resources Legacy Fund · The Nature Conservancy · The Wilderness Society · American Trails · National Park Foundation · Wilburforce Foundation · Western Conservation Foundation · The Corps Network · Conservation Lands 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 National Forest Foundation 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.
- Northwest Youth Corps — 100% of income from government
- Lomakatsi Restoration Project — 100% of income from government
- Wallowa Resources Inc — 100% of income from government
- Central Oregon Forest Stewardship Foundation — 84% of income from government
- Blue Mountains Forest Partners — 68% of income from government
- Phoenix School of Roseburg — 41% of income from government
- Northwoods Stewardship Center — 40% of income from government
- Antfarm Inc — 29% of income from government
- Trailkeepers of Oregon — 19% of income from government
- The Freshwater Trust — 17% of income from government
- Walama Restoration Project — 14% of income from government
- Oregon Natural Desert Association — 9% of income from government
- Sustainable Northwest — 5% of income from government
- White River Partnership Inc — 4% of income from government
- Oregon Natural Resources Council Fund Oregon Wild — 2% of income from government
- Appalachian Mountain Club — 1% of income from government
- Vermont Atv Sportsmans Association Inc — 1% of income from government
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.