· Private foundation
Ordinary People 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k5 grants · $10k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $215k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Sightline Institute | $30,000 |
| ACLU Foundation | $30,000 |
| Clean Energy Transition Institute | $30,000 |
| Heartland Fund | $25,000 |
| Represent Us Education Fund | $25,000 |
| Fuse Innovation Fund | $20,000 |
| Conservation Northwest | $20,000 |
| Hopewell Fund | $20,000 |
| Sustainable Markets Foundations | $15,000 |
| The Urbanist Fund | $5,000 |
| Fairvote Washington Foundation | $2,000 |
| Fannie and John Hertz Foundation | $1,000 |
| 350 Seattle | $1,000 |
| Cascade Bicycle Club | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 46% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Ordinary People 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. Read by recipient address, 57% of the giving stays in WA; read by stated purpose it is 50% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
12 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 4 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $47k 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
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC5× · 2020–2024 · $150k · revenue +65%- SISightline Institute5× · 2020–2024 · $110k · revenue +9%
- CEClean Energy Transition Institute5× · 2020–2024 · $95k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $20k
- SJSocial Justice Fundone grant, 2020 · $10k
- RPRural Peoples Platformone grant, 2023 · $3k · revenue +2%
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.
Advocate for tax policy in Washington State
We are workers, united across different industries to improve our working conditions and our lives. We come together as working people to build power through education, organizing, and enforcement. We work to raise and uphold standards in…
The Center for Environmental Law & Policy is a statewide organization whose mission is to protect, preserve and restore Washington's waters through education, advocacy, policy reform, and public interest litigation.
Founded in 2001, Spark Northwest accelerates the just transition to clean energy in the Pacific Northwest. Spark Northwest uses two primary strategies: (1) on-the-ground project consulting, focusing on communities with limited financial…
Seattle-based online publication seeking to examine and influence urban policies.
Washingtonians for Public banking promotes education and civic engagement on public banking and banking reform within Washington state. The organization organizes, educates, and advocates for the establishment of public banking, and…
To achieve progress through government,by the people, and for the people, in Washington state.
Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) uses data-driven advocacy and litigation to fight for forests, communities and the climate.
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 Pro-Choice Washington Foundation is our 501c3 focused on issue research, leadership development, and community and decision-maker education.
RE Sources mobilizes people of Northwest Washington to build just and thriving communities and to protect the land, water, and climate on which we all depend.
To accelerate progress in interventions that harness Earths natural systems to stabilize the climate.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Sightline Institute and the most unlike its peers is The Urbanist Fund. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 22 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 AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Sightline Institute ↗
- Who funds Fuse Innovation Fund ↗
- Who funds Clean Energy Transition Institute ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION NW ↗
- Who funds 350 Seattle ↗
- Who funds WINDWARD FUND ↗
- Who funds RepresentUs Education Fund ↗
- Who funds HOPEWELL FUND ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MARKETS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Washington Progress Fund ↗
- Who funds THE URBANIST FUND ↗
- Who funds FANNIE AND JOHN HERTZ FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON CONSERVATION ACTION EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Rural Peoples Platform ↗
- Who funds FAIRVOTE WASHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Cascade Bicycle Club ↗
- Who funds CLIMATE SOLUTIONS ↗
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: Seattle Foundation · Stolte Family Foundation · The Bullitt Foundation · The GreerSolien Fund · Ridge Road Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Tides Foundation · Kaleidoscope Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Sustainable Path Foundation · David & Cathy Habib Foundation · Kaphan 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 Ordinary People 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.
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 Ordinary People Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ordinary People 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.