· Public charity
Nia Tero Foundation
Nia tero works alongside indigenous peoples to secure their guardianship of vital ecosystems.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 25 grants below total $3,975,304 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $23,048,675 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $19,073,371 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 · FY2024
- $10k–50k10 grants · $195k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+6 grants · $2.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMAZON FRONTLINES | $644,000 |
| CONSERVATION AGREEMENT FUND | $500,000 |
| RSF SOCIAL FINANCE INC | $410,000 |
| LAND IS LIFE INC | $380,000 |
| ONE REEF WORLDWIDE STEWARDSHIP | $350,000 |
| BLACKFEET ECO KNOWLEDGE | $253,590 |
| IF NOT US THEN WHO | $240,125 |
| OFFICE OF THE UN HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS | $223,089 |
| DTWO LTD | $200,000 |
| RESOURCES LEGACY FUND (RLF) | $150,000 |
| NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN | $125,000 |
| NOABU HOLDINGS LLC | $99,500 |
| NEW YORK UNIVERSITY | $80,000 |
| RAINFOREST FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| JUSTIN DEEGAN DBA THUNDER REVOLUTION STUDIO LLC | $50,000 |
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 (FY19–23, $1.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 94% 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
Grants abroad, by region — $19M on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 6 regions, $19M to organizations and $130k to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: SUPPORT INDIGENOUS GUARDIANSHIP · SUPPORT INDIGENOUS ORGANIZATIONAL STRENGTHENING · SUPPORT GUARDIANSHIP OF INDIGENOUS TERRITORY
Stated purpose: INDIGENOUS FILM SUPPORT · SUPPORT INDIGENOUS PRACTICE AND WISDOM · SUPPORT INDIGENOUS POLICY GATHERING
Stated purpose: STRATEGIC ADVOCACY SUPPORT · SUPPORT COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT TRAINING · SUPPORT INDIGENOUS GUARDIANSHIP
Stated purpose: SUPPORT INDIGENOUS ORGANIZATIONAL STRENGTHENING · SUPPORT FOR INDIGENOUS PARTICIPATION IN GLOBAL POLICY · SUPPORT FOR INDIGENOUS PARTICIPATION IN GLOBAL POLICY AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Stated purpose: SUPPORT FOR INDIGENOUS PARTICIPATION IN GLOBAL POLICY
Stated purpose: SUPPORT ARCTIC CIRCLE INDIGENOUS YOUTH ADVOCACY · SUPPORT TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES PAVILION AT GLOBAL EVENTS · SUPPORT STRENGTHENING INDIGENOUS
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 10% of Nia Tero Foundation’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.
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 +43% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 10 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, 69% 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
CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION5× · 2018–2023 · $4.8M · revenue +113%- AFAMAZON FRONTLINES5× · 2020–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +79%
- OWOneReef Worldwide Stewardship4× · 2021–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +27% · 27% of their budget
Funded once
- RSRUDOLPH STEINER BENEVOLENT FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $1.6M · revenue -56%
- BSBOREAL SONGBIRD INITIATIVEone grant, 2021 · $850k · revenue -100%
- EDEXPEDICIONARIOS DA SAUDE INCone grant, 2020 · $290k · revenue -94% · 66% of their budget
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.
To protect the rainforest and advance the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with Indigenous communities in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon Basin's…
The Oakland Institute, an independent policy think tank, works to support global struggles for Indigenous rights, human rights, and land rights and to promote public participation and fair debate on critical social, economic, and…
Activist scholars advancing the right of indigenous peoples worldwide
Nia tero works alongside indigenous peoples to secure their guardianship of vital ecosystems. indigenous peoples are guardians of earth.(see schedule o)
The affiliated tribes of northwest indians is founded on the principles of unity and cooperation among indian governments and people.
10,000 Years Institute evaluates the ecological effects of human activities on natural environments, and promotes the maintenance and restoration of ecological integrity through the integration of reliable scientific information, sound…
Nature and culture international conserves biologically diverse landscapes in latin america, in concert with local cultures, for the well-being of the planet.
International Rivers protects rivers and defends the rights of communities that depend on them.
Se-Si-Le (Saw-See-Lah) is the Lummi language term for our grandmother. Respect for elders is central to native life: to acknowledge grandmother earth is to invoke ancestral and cultural power. Founded by Lummi tribal member Jay Julius,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Indian Law Resource Center and the most unlike its peers is Rudolph Steiner Benevolent Foundation. 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
90 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. 90 of the 108 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
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 INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMAZON FRONTLINES ↗
- Who funds RUDOLPH STEINER BENEVOLENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OneReef Worldwide Stewardship ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds BOREAL SONGBIRD INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds Land is Life Inc ↗
- Who funds RSF SOCIAL FINANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Blackfeet Eco Knowledge ↗
- Who funds If Not Us Then Who ↗
- Who funds RAINFOREST FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Conservation Agreement Fund A Nj Nonprofit Corporation ↗
- Who funds DTWO LTD DBA Awana Digital ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC RESOURCES FOR EDUCATION AND LEARNING ↗
- Who funds EXPEDICIONARIOS DA SAUDE INC ↗
- Who funds American Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds REDFORD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds INDIAN LAW RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Sundance Institute ↗
- Who funds RESOURCES LEGACY FUND ↗
- Who funds PAGE SEVENTY-THREE PRODUCTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds IDENTITY INC ↗
- Who funds BIG SKY FILM INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Points North Institute ↗
- Who funds IAF INC ↗
- Who funds New York University ↗
- Who funds WOMEN MAKE MOVIES INC ↗
- Who funds Identity Inc ↗
- Who funds INTERNEWS NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Grist Magazine Inc ↗
- Who funds Na'ah Illahee Fund ↗
- Who funds POTLATCH FUND ↗
- Who funds HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds UNITED INDIANS OF ALL TRIBES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHIEF SEATTLE CLUB ↗
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: Rsf Social Finance Inc · Inatai Foundation · The Ford Foundation · Novo Foundation · The Satterberg Foundation Inc · The Christensen Fund · Charlotte y Martin Foundation-Ima · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Seattle Foundation · Na'ah Illahee Fund · The Schmidt Family Foundation · Proteus Fund 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 Nia Tero 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- The Center for Independent Documentary Inc — 6% of income from government
- Babson College — 3% 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.