How much does National Wildlife Federation give?

National Wildlife Federation reported 150 itemized grants totaling $19,578,081, out of $20,097,880 in total grant expense reported on the return in its FY2024 IRS filing. It funded between 66 and 114 organizations a year over FY2017 to FY2023.

What does National Wildlife Federation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2024, its largest causes are Environment (85%), Animals (15%), Food & Nutrition (0%).

Who are National Wildlife Federation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2024: Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority ($19M), National Audubon Society Inc ($3.2M), University of Wisconsin Madison ($1.6M).

Does National Wildlife Federation fund new organizations?

In FY2023, 23% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Which funders back the same organizations as National Wildlife Federation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include The Partnership Project Inc, United States Energy Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated.

Where is National Wildlife Federation based?

National Wildlife Federation is based in VA.

National Wildlife Federation

National Wildlife Federation at a glance Mostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

National Wildlife Federation

Unite all americans to ensure wildlife thrives in a rapidly changing world.

$20M

Granted FY2024still arriving

150

Grants FY2024still arriving

States reached

$9.8M

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 2024.

Environment$48MAnimals$8.6MFood & Nutrition$25k

02FY2024 · 150 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured

The 150 grants below total $19,578,081, the rows itemized in this filing. The $20,097,880 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $519,799 is giving the schedule does not break out (grants under the $5,000 itemization floor, grants to individuals, grants on other schedules). Every figure below describes the itemized rows only.

By grant size · FY2024

Under $10k23 grants · $160k
$10k–50k85 grants · $1.9M
$50k–250k36 grants · $3.6M
$250k+6 grants · $14M

$25,000

Median grant

States reached

$179M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
MOUNTAINS RECREATION & CONSERVATION AUTHORITY	$9,814,250
BAD RIVER BAND OF LAKE SUPERIOR TRIBE OF CHIPPEWA INDIANS	$1,200,000
TOWN OF OXFORD	$1,176,921
ETCHART SHEEP RANCH LLC	$800,000
NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY	$623,692
WIND RIVER TRIBAL BUFFALO INITIATIVE	$312,454
BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN	$200,000
CITIZENS FOR PENNSYLVANIA'S FUTURE	$196,858
THE CENTER FOR AQUATIC SCIENCES	$178,869
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND	$174,533
SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS FUND	$169,959
CENTRO DE APOYO FAMILIAR	$150,407
MINNESOTA CONSERVATION FEDERATION	$129,416
WILDLIFE INFORMATION CENTER DBA LEHIGH GAP NATURE CENTER	$121,509
LOUISIANA WILDLIFE FEDERATION	$117,249

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 (FY18–24, $299k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% 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.

90%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$51M · 156 repeat orgs$5.6M to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +61% since the first grant, against +43% for those funded once.

156 repeat relationships: 88 still active in FY2024, 68 since wound down; 59 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

156

Total granted

$51M

$1.5M

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+61%

+43%

Still filing today

83%

69%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2024, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4.1M went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

EnvironmentAnimalsEducationCommunity ImprovementHuman ServicesArts & CultureOther

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

NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY INC
7× · 2018–2024 · $3.2M · revenue +48%
New Jersey Audubon Society
8× · 2017–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +33%
CF
CITIZENS FOR PENNSYLVANIA'S FUTURE
8× · 2017–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +21%

Funded once

TA
THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA
one grant, 2023 · $210k · revenue +18%
TP
THE PENNSYLVANIA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETYgraduated
one grant, 2020 · $75k · revenue +60%
TP
The Partnership Project Action Fundgraduated
one grant, 2022 · $55k · revenue +258%

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.

Western Resource Advocates

Western Resource Advocates (WRA) is a regional nonprofit advocacy organization fighting climate change and its impacts to sustain the environment, economy, and people of the West. As the region's go-to experts for more than three decades,…

Crime & Legal

World Wildlife Fund Inc

Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)

Environment

National Caucus of Environmental Legislators

The national caucus of environmental legislators empowers a nonpartisan network of legislative champions to protect, conserve, and improve the natural and human environment.

Education

Idaho Conservation League Inc

Icl's mission is to create a conservation community and pragmatic, enduring solutions that protect and restore the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the land and wildlife you love.

—

Sustainable Conservation

Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…

Environment

The Izaak Walton League of America

To conserve, restore and promote the sustainable use and enjoyment of our natural resources, including soil, air, woods, water and wildlife.

Environment

Cascadia Wildlands

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…

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

Defenders of Wildlife

Defenders of Wildlife is a national, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities.

Animals

Oregon Natural Resources Council Fund

Oregon Wild works to protect and restore Oregon's wildlands, wildlife and waters as an enduring legacy for future generations.

Environment

National Association of Clean Water Agencies

Nacwa is the national voice of public clean water utilities, shaping water policy, convening a vibrant peer network, and empowering water leaders.

—

Alaska Wildlife Alliance

Support ecosystem-based wildlife management by increasing public awareness of wildlife issues, responding to information requests, advocating for science-based wildlife habitat management through proposal and comment submissions, and…

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Environment America Research and Policy Center Inc; the most unlike its peers is Design Workshop Foundation (Aka Dw Foundation). 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

246 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

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 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 246 of the 314 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)

240/246

Grantees still filing

169/246

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$29,413,198Environment$17,653,586Animals$5,825,717Education$971,849Community Improvement$490,478International$489,887Arts & Culture$433,579

Showing the 200 largest grantees by grant value.

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.

The Partnership Project IncDC58.1× affinity28 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: The Partnership Project Inc · United States Energy Foundation · Environmental Defense Fund Incorporated · Patagoniaorg · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · Resources Legacy Fund · The Nature Conservancy · The Energy Foundation · The William Penn Foundation · National Audubon Society Inc · Windward Fund · The Pew Charitable Trusts

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 National Wildlife Federation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from National Wildlife Federation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

10get no government money at all

39report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

1rely 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 National Wildlife Federation’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