· Private foundation
Pendleton and Elisabeth Carey Miller Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 80% of PENDLETON AND ELISABETH CAREY MILLER CHARITABLE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $12k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $199k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $606k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ELISABETH MILLER BOTANICAL GARDEN T | $185,116 |
| UNIVERSITY WA MILLER LIBRARY | $173,632 |
| ELISABETH MILLER BOTANICAL GARDEN T | $155,102 |
| ELISABETH MILLER BOTANICAL GARDEN T | $92,540 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WA BOTANIC GARDENS | $41,500 |
| DISCOVER YOUR NORTHWEST | $30,000 |
| SMITHSONIAN NAT'L MUSEUM-NATURAL HI | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WA SCHOOL OF LAW | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON | $25,000 |
| ARBORETUM FOUNDATION | $12,500 |
| THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND | $10,000 |
| PACIFIC SCIENCE CENTER | $10,000 |
| HOLOCAUST CENTER FOR HUMANITY | $10,000 |
| WASHINGTON STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| BLACKPASTORG | $5,000 |
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 (FY20–23, $55k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 100% 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.
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 +43% since the first grant, against -17% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 10 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $239k 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
- TETHE ELISABETH CAREY MILLER BOTANICAL GARDEN TRUST6× · 2019–2024 · $1.9M · revenue +43% · 52% of their budget
- SPSEATTLE PARKS FOUNDATION5× · 2019–2023 · $320k · revenue +107%
THE BLOEDEL RESERVE5× · 2019–2023 · $160k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WAone grant, 2022 · $188k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON MILLER LIBone grant, 2023 · $168k
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WA BURKE MUSEUMone grant, 2023 · $25k
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.
Pacific bonsai museum inspires a closer look at nature through the living art of bonsai. we create opportunities to experience the powerful presence of bonsai and be moved to cultivate a more intentional relationship with nature. through…
We preserve and enhance Dunn Gardens as a public resource, celebrating the original 1915 Olmsted design and showcasing the evolution of garden design in the Pacific Northwest.
Preserve in perpetuity the natural habitats, rural landscapes, and open spaces of the great peninsula of washington's puget sound.
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
The museum of northwest art collects, preserves, interprets and exhibits art created in the pacific northwest, supports artists, and strives to integrate art into the lives of all people. the museum is free and open to the public seven…
To enrich life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.
Gardens of golden gate park connects people to plants, the planet, and each other. the gardens offer educational and experiential programs for visitors and actively manages the living collections.
The Museum inspires wonder, discovery, and stewardship of our natural world. The Museum is a catalyst for conservation and a valued learning resource, facilitating active scientific and historical inquiry for all ages.
Meerkerk Gardens is a 10 acre botanical garden featuring a world class collection of hybrid and species rhododendrons, surrounded by 43 acres of native forest preserve. Our gardens, nursery, educational and cultural programs draw visitors…
Be a catalyst! Ignite our community's passion for nature and science.
To enrich life by perpetuating tropical plants, ecosystems and cultural heritage through discovery, scientific research, conservation, and education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Garden Conservancy Inc and the most unlike its peers is Ryther. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 48 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
22 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. 22 of the 39 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 THE ELISABETH CAREY MILLER BOTANICAL GARDEN TRUST ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE BLOEDEL RESERVE ↗
- Who funds ARBORETUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC SCIENCE CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WOODLAND PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BURKE MUSEUM ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds THE GARDEN CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds BLACKPASTORG ↗
- Who funds UPLIFT NORTHWEST ↗
- Who funds Discover Your Northwest ↗
- Who funds Friends of Lakewood ↗
- Who funds RYTHER ↗
- Who funds BRAIDED RIVER ↗
- Who funds HUMANITIES WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds BELLEVUE BOTANICAL GARDEN SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Holocaust Center For Humanity ↗
- Who funds Olympia Historical Society ↗
- Who funds SHORELINE HISTORICAL MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds HARDY FERN FOUNDATION ↗
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 · Artsfund · Lucky Seven Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · The Hugh and Jane Ferguson Foundation · Wyman Youth Trust · The Norcliffe Foundation · Raynier Institute & Foundation · Puget Sound Energy Foundation · Gates Foundation · The Baker Foundation · Dv & Ida McEachern Charitable Tr
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 Pendleton and Elisabeth Carey Miller Charitable 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.
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How do I get to Pendleton and Elisabeth Carey Miller Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Pendleton and Elisabeth Carey Miller Charitable 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.