· Private foundation
North Star Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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 $10k1 grant · $500
- $50k–250k1 grant · $71k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTH STAR COLLABORATIVE FOUNDATION | $70,900 |
| FRIENDS OF PALM SPRINGS ANIMAL SHEL | $500 |
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, $71k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% 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 +20% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 20 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $500 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
- NSNorth Star Collaborative Foundation3× · 2020–2024 · $86k · revenue +20%
- SOSAVE OSWIT CANYON INC2× · 2020–2023 · $51k · revenue +38%
ONE ARIZONA2× · 2018–2019 · $15k · revenue +416%
Funded once
- PSPalm Springs Center for Creativityone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue -77%
- MFMI FAMILIA VOTAgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue +72%
- TDTHE DINNER PARTY LABS CO NPOC SERVICESone grant, 2023 · $8k · revenue -15%
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.
Building a diverse grassroots movement to address the causes of climate disruption through justice-based solutions by inspiring, training and mobilizing people to act.
The oregon center for public policy's mission is to achieve economic justice for all oregonians through research, analysis, and advocacy. ocpp works to change policies that foster economic security and stability for all oregonians. we do…
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
The NW Energy Coalition is an alliance of over 100 environmental, civic, and human service organizations, utilities, and businesses in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia, plus many individual members. The NW Energy…
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Rogue Climate's mission is to empower Southern Oregon communities most impacted by climate change including low-income, rural, youth, seniors & communities of color, to win climate justice by organizing for clean energy, sustainable jobs &…
To ensure economic prosperity in the portland region by providing strong leadership, partnership, and programs that encourage business growth and vitality.
Heal utah's mission is to protect utah's environment and its people by promoting clean air, clean energy, and comprehensive solutions to radioactive and toxic waste.
Oregon Justice Network is an alliance built and staffed by criminal legal system impacted people advocating for the well-being of people affected or at-risk of being affected by carceral systems. Our work centers around restorative…
Open signal's mission is to nurture the change-making power of community media in service of a just and equitable world.
Climate catalyst sparks collective action to tackle the biggest climate challenges we face today: cutting emissions in heavy industries.
The Coast Fork Willamette Watershed Council is a local nonprofit organization that strives to enhance and restore habitat for fish and wildlife our community and for future generations. Our Board of Directors consists of seven members with…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Valley Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Aluminaire House Foundation Inc. 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 23 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
57 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. 57 of the 94 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 North Star Collaborative Foundation ↗
- Who funds World Pulse Voices ↗
- Who funds SAVE OSWIT CANYON INC ↗
- Who funds ONE ARIZONA ↗
- Who funds Palm Springs Center for Creativity ↗
- Who funds MI FAMILIA VOTA ↗
- Who funds PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Womens Foundation of Oregon ↗
- Who funds THE DINNER PARTY LABS CO NPOC SERVICES ↗
- Who funds KAIROSPDX ↗
- Who funds THE CONSTRUCT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IN A LANDSCAPE ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA CENTER FOR EMPOWERMENT ↗
- Who funds MOTHERING JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds Oregon Environmental Council ↗
- Who funds WORKER POWER INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds United Way of the Columbia-Willamette ↗
- Who funds City Club of Portland ↗
- Who funds UTAH FILM CENTER ↗
- Who funds Transition Projects Inc ↗
- Who funds FAITH ORGANIZING ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds CAUSA OF OREGON ↗
- Who funds ECOTRUST ↗
- Who funds DAP Health Inc ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds Sightline Institute ↗
- Who funds JEREMY WILSON FOUNDATION THE ↗
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: The Oregon Community Foundation · The Collins Foundation · Meyer Memorial Trust · Marie Lamfrom Charitable Foundation Trust · The Ford Family Foundation · Ronald W Naito Md Foundation · The Roundhouse Foundation · The Autzen Foundation · Maybelle Clark Macdonald Fund · James F & Marion L Miller Foundation · OCF Joseph E Weston Public Foundation · M J Murdock Charitable Trust
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 North Star 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Neighborimpact — 68% of income from government
- Mercy Corps — 47% of income from government
- Bridge Meadows — 36% of income from government
- Transition Projects Inc — 29% of income from government
- United Way of the Columbia-Willamette — 25% of income from government
- Kairospdx — 19% of income from government
- Ecotrust — 14% of income from government
- The Portland Playhouse — 11% of income from government
- Live Wire Radio Inc — 1% of income from government
- Pear — 1% of income from government
- Caldera — 1% of income from government
- Womens Foundation of Oregon — 0% of income from government
- Central Oregon Environmental Center Inc Dba - the Environmental Center — 0% of income from government
- In a Landscape — 0% of income from government
- The Campbell Institute — 0% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to North Star Foundation?
Find your warmest path to North Star Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.