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North Cascades Institute at a glanceMostly funded, not a grantmaker: see who funds it →

· Public charity

North Cascades Institute

The institutes's mission is to inspire environmental stewardship through transformative learning experiences in natures.

$770k
Granted FY2017
11
Grants FY2017
1
States reached
$145k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its fieldRead
01What it funds
01FY2017 · 11 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

How this is measured
The 11 grants below total $407,128, the rows itemized in this filing. The $769,760 headline is the total grant expense on the return; the other $362,632 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 · FY2017

  • Under $10k3 grants · $23k
  • $10k–50k6 grants · $148k
  • $50k–250k2 grants · $236k
$19,380
Median grant
1
States reached
$9.2M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Bellingham School District$144,547
Mount Vernon School District$91,086
Sedro-Woolley School District$37,851
Anacortes School District$32,616
Blaine Elementary School$28,143
Chelan Middle School$19,380
Everett School District$18,582
Friday Harbor Middle School$11,505
Methow Valley Elementary$9,558
Concrete Elementary School$8,352
Lyman Elementary School$5,508
02The need
02

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 (FY17–17) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 100% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 7%Chelan Middle School: $19k → 9%Friday Harbor Middle School: $12k → 10%Sedro-Woolley School District: $38k → 11%Bellingham School District: $145k → 12%Methow Valley Elementary: $10k → 17%Everett School District: $19k → 11%Blaine Elementary School: $28k → 12%Lyman Elementary School: $6k → 11%Mount Vernon School District: $91k → 11%Anacortes School District: $33k → 11%Concrete Elementary School: $8k → 11%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 field
03the grantee network

0 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2024.

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 2024, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 0 of the 10 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)
0/0
Grantees still filing
0/0
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

BELLINGHAM SCHOOL DISTRICT 501: $144,547 · OtherBELLINGHAM SCHOOL DISTRICT 501Mount Vernon School District: $128,937 · OtherMount Vernon School DistrictANACORTES SCHOOL DISTRICT: $32,616 · OtherANACORTES SCHOOL DISTRICTBlaine Elementary School: $28,143 · OtherBlaine Elementary SchoolChelan Middle School: $19,380 · OtherEverett Public Schools: $18,582 · Other+4 more: $34,923 · Other+4 more
Other$407,128

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

25%50%75%100%grantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their 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.

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.

North Sound Accountab…The Albertsons Compan…Kaiser Foundation Hea…Building Changes
North Sound Accountable Community of HealthWA15.6× affinity5 shared granteesties to 3 of 3Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: North Sound Accountable Community of Health · The Albertsons Companies Foundation · Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington · Building Changes

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.

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 10 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 2017, released 2017. 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 $550k of grant expense, but none of it to a named recipient. On a Form 990 that can mean grants abroad, filed by region only (Schedule F), grants under $5,000, which are not itemized, or a schedule referenced as an attachment the e-file does not carry. The figures above are therefore from FY2017, the most recent year this funder named its grantees.

Source object · view filing

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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