· Public charity
Potlatch Fund
Potlach fund's mission is to inspire and build upon the native tradition of giving and to expand philanthropy with tribal nations and native communities in the pacific northwest.
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.
The 70 grants below total $696,425 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,219,723 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $523,298 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k45 grants · $351k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $246k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NA'AH ILLAHEE FUND | $100,000 |
| HUMMINGBIRD INDIGENOUS FAMILY SERVICES | $15,625 |
| INDIGENOUS PERFORMANCE PRODUCTIONS | $10,000 |
| SAUK-SUIATTLE INDIAN TRIBE | $10,000 |
| E-PEH-TES | $10,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF NORTH CHEYENNE NATI | $10,000 |
| MAKAH CULTURAL RESEARCH CENTER | $10,000 |
| INDIGENOUS IDAHO ALLIANCE | $10,000 |
| SILETZ REGALIA SHARING CLOSET | $10,000 |
| NORTHERN CHEYENNE LANGUAGE CONSORTIUM | $10,000 |
| CHIEF JOSEPH FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| AANIIH AND NAKODA MONTESSORI | $10,000 |
| INDIGENOUS LEADERSHIP ACADEMY | $10,000 |
| CHICKADEE COMMUNITY SERVICES | $10,000 |
| SAGE INDIGENOUS LAW CENTER | $10,000 |
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, $348k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 6% of Potlatch Fund’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, 80% of the giving stays in WA; read by stated purpose it is 75% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +127% since the first grant, against +47% for the ones you funded once.
72 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2024, 52 since wound down; 40 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, 40% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $414k 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
- NINa'ah Illahee Fund7× · 2018–2024 · $346k · revenue +496%
- NANATIVE ACTION NETWORK6× · 2018–2023 · $247k · revenue ×31 · 29% of their budget
- UIUNITED INDIANS OF ALL TRIBES FOUNDATION6× · 2017–2022 · $144k · revenue +176%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $40k
- STSteilacoom Tribal Museum Associationone grant, 2021 · $40k
- KIKIKIALLUS INDIAN NATIONone grant, 2021 · $40k
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.
Fund Indigenous Nations Languate, Culture and Restoration Plans
The american indian institute's mission is to perpetuate the ancient wisdom and cultural heritage of north america's native people and to promote a greater understanding of that wisdom amoung all people.
Federal grants and contracts were used to provide direct community and public health services within Native American communities in Northwest Washington
Preservation of Lushootseed language and culture through research, publishing and presentation of oral history and traditions.
Womanshare Legacy is an educational, financial and cultural resource for women who may be facing challenges because of discrimination, lack of opportunities or scarcity of personal support. Womanshare Legacy works locally with women,…
Blue Bird Lifeways nurtures the breath of life by fostering remembrance, reconnection, and reclamation of land, language, culture, and identity. Through this work, we address the intergenerational impacts of trauma while strengthening…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Native American Youth and Family Center and the most unlike its peers is Research and Development Services of America. 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 10 years old; the field is 16. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 19% of your grantees by number, and just 10% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 7% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
103 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. 103 of the 175 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 Na'ah Illahee Fund ↗
- Who funds NATIVE ACTION NETWORK ↗
- Who funds UNITED INDIANS OF ALL TRIBES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DUWAMISH TRIBAL SERVICES DBA DUWAMISH TRIBAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Red Eagle Soaring ↗
- Who funds Urban American Indian Alaska Native Education Alli ↗
- Who funds OPEN ARMS PERINATAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Northwest Justice Project ↗
- Who funds CHIEF SEATTLE CLUB ↗
- Who funds LHAQ'TEMISH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNKITAWA ↗
- Who funds PEACEKEEPER SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Salish School of Spokane ↗
- Who funds Center Pole ↗
- Who funds INCHELIUM LANGUAGE AND CULTURE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Mother Nation ↗
- Who funds Steilacoom Tribal Museum Association ↗
- Who funds LITTLE SHELL TRIBE OF CHIPPEWA INDI ↗
- Who funds Hearts Gathered ↗
- Who funds International Traditional Games Soc ↗
- Who funds Chief Joseph Foundation ↗
- Who funds NATIVE AMERICAN YOUTH AND FAMILY CENTER ↗
- Who funds INDIGENOUS IDAHO ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds SPOKANE LANGUAGE HOUSE ↗
- Who funds INTERCULTURE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM AT WARM SPRINGS ↗
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: First Nations Development Institute · Na'ah Illahee Fund · Inatai Foundation · Charlotte y Martin Foundation-Ima · Philanthropy Northwest · Seeding Justice · Social Justice Fund Northwest · Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples Inc · Common Counsel Foundation · Ndn Collective Inc · Northwest Area Foundation · Seattle 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 Potlatch Fund 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.
- Opera Theater Oregon — 100% of income from government
- Oregon Community Health Workers Assoc — 45% of income from government
- Native American Youth and Family Center — 23% of income from government
- Red Lodge Transition Services — 12% of income from government
- Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians — 10% 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.