· Private foundation
Paws Up 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 $10k13 grants · $29k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $25k
- $250k+1 grant · $253k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL COWGIRL MUSEUM | $252,500 |
| BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE | $15,000 |
| WESTERN MONTANA FAIR AND LIVESTOCK SALE | $10,048 |
| YOGA HAVEN | $5,000 |
| ST JUDES CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $5,000 |
| BRAVE HEARTS | $3,000 |
| AMERICAN QUARTER HORSE FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| WORKING DOGS FOR CONSERVATION | $2,500 |
| BIG BLACKFOOT CHAPTER OF MONTANA TROUT UNLIMITED | $2,500 |
| HUMANE SOCIETY OF WESTERN MONTANA | $1,500 |
| EBONY HORSEWOMEN | $1,500 |
| WILD SKIES RAPTOR CENTER | $1,090 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| ALPINE ARTISANS | $1,000 |
| SEELEY LAKE HISTORICAL MUSEUM | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $21k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 24% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +27% since the first grant, against -4% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 6 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $24k 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
- NCNATIONAL COWGIRL MUSEUM AND HALL OF FAME INC2× · 2017–2024 · $264k · revenue +364%
- BCBLACKFOOT CHALLENGE INC6× · 2019–2024 · $88k · revenue +162%
- MFMISSOULA FOOD BANK & COMMUNITY CENTER5× · 2017–2023 · $43k · revenue +38%
Funded once
- LVLAS VEGAS VICTIMS' FUNDone grant, 2017 · $10k
- MCMISSOULA COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENTone grant, 2018 · $7k
- AAQHAone grant, 2020 · $6k
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.
Wild horse protection, preservation, rescue and care work.
The american wild horse campaign is the nation's leading conservation organization dedicated to preserving the freedom and habitat of wild horses and burros. through its initiatives in advocacy, conservation, land preservation, and legal…
The montana wildlife federation is a statewide conservation organization dedicated to protecting wildlife, wildlife habitat, and public access for outdoor recreation.
To rescue wild horses and burros from auctions or kill pens, blm short term holding pens or other situations that are dangerous for the welfare of a wild horse or burro. as well as reunite wild horse families to keep them together.
Looking after and caring for wild mustangs
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is American Quarter Horse Foundation and the most unlike its peers is St Judes Ranch for Children 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 33 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 26% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
38 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. 38 of the 73 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 NATIONAL COWGIRL MUSEUM AND HALL OF FAME INC ↗
- Who funds BLACKFOOT CHALLENGE INC ↗
- Who funds MISSOULA FOOD BANK & COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds MISSOULA ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN QUARTER HORSE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Yoga Haven ↗
- Who funds ANGEL HORSES INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA LAS VEGAS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WATSON CHILDREN'S SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF WESTERN MONTANA ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST JUDES RANCH FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds NRA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Ebony Horsewomen Inc ↗
- Who funds BRAVEHEARTS THERAPEUTIC RIDING AND EDUCATIONAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds WILD SKIES RAPTOR CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN QUARTER HORSE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EAGLE VALLEY HUMANE SOCIETY A NONPROFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds SPRINGS PRESERVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NOAH'S ANIMAL HOUSE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER MISSOULA FAMILY YMCA ↗
- Who funds LAS VEGAS NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SEELEY LAKE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GARNET PRESERVATION ASSOCIATION INC ↗
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: NV Energy Charitable Foundation · Montana Community Foundation Inc · Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Werler Family Charitable Foundation · Providence Health & Services - Montana · The Bill & Rosemary Gallagher Foundation · Headwaters Health Foundation of Western Montana · Town Pump Charitable Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation 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 Paws Up 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.
- Ebony Horsewomen Inc — 18% 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.