· Public charity
Puyallup Watershed Initiative
The mission of the PUYALLUP WATERSHED INITIATIVE (the initiative) is to improve social and environmental conditions throughout the watershed, which comprises more than 1,000 square miles from mt.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k1 grant · $9k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $36k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PIERCE CONSERVATION DISTRICT | $36,278 |
| TACOMA-PIERCE COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT | $9,069 |
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 (FY21–23) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 4% of your 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 Puyallup Watershed Initiative’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, 98% of the giving stays in WA; read by stated purpose it is 96% — 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 +531% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2023, 2 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 20% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $36k 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
- EWE3 WASHINGTON2× · 2021–2022 · $60k · 41% of their budget
- ALAMERICAN LEADERSHIP FORUM TACOMA PIERCE COUNTY CHAPTER2× · 2021–2022 · $20k · revenue -50%
- TPTACOMA PIERCE COUNTY HEALTH DEPT2× · 2021–2023 · $16k
Funded once
- EEEVERGREEN EMPOWERMENT GROUPone grant, 2021 · $212k
- DODOWNTOWN ON THE GOone grant, 2021 · $119k · revenue +6% · 38% of their budget
- PCPIERCE CONSERVATION DISTRICTone grant, 2021 · $93k
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.
To protect birds and other wildlife through education habitat protection and environmental advocacy.
Foster Growth in the Community
To bring people, communities, and resources together to ensure waterfront park thrives as a vibrant gathering space - uplifting locals, fostering connections and honoring seattle's natural beauty and stories.
Educate about,support, and promote biologically sound and socially equitable agriculture
The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust leads and inspires action to conserve and enhance the landscape of the Mountains to Sound Greenway, ensuring a long-term balance between people and nature.
Greater Metro Parks Foundation's mission is to cultivate a community invested in providing parks and recreation access to all.Its vision is plentiful, equitable access to nature, play, and recreation in Tacoma.
Educate public about heritage of the olympic peninsula emphasizing timber industry and forestry
Futurewise works throughout Washington state to encourage healthy, equitable and opportunity-rich communities, and to protect our most valuable farmlands, forests and water resources through wise land use policies and practices.
To organize and present memorable special community events that honor our diverse heritage, inspire unity, and contribute to building vibrant communities.
The mission of the Whatcom Land Trust is to preserve and protect wildlife habitat, scenic, agricultural and open space lands in Whatcom County for future generations by securing interests in land and promoting land stewardship.
Strengthening Tacomas thriving communities by fueling our public library system through philanthropy and outreach.
Washington Bikes works to ensure that all who ride a bicycle in Washington have safe comfortable and convenient places to ride. Organization advocates for bicyclists rights and shapes policies.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Tacoma Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Alchemy Indoor Skate Park & Education Center. 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.
19 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. 19 of the 26 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 GREATER TACOMA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN ON THE GO ↗
- Who funds E3 WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR TACOMA STUDENTS ↗
- Who funds Foothills Rails-to-Trails Coalition ↗
- Who funds TACOMA TREE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TACOMA FARMERS MARKET ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE CONNECTIONS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LEADERSHIP FORUM TACOMA PIERCE COUNTY CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds FOR THE PEOPLE ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ForeverGreen Trails ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON STATE NURSERY & LANDSCAPE ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Alchemy Indoor Skate Park & Education Center ↗
- Who funds FOSS WATERWAY SEAPORT ↗
- Who funds TACOMA GARDEN CLUB ↗
- Who funds PUYALLUP RIVER WATERSHED COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds GEORGE WEYERHAEUSER PACIFIC RIM BONSAI COLLECTION ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC EDUCATION INSTITUTE ↗
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: Greater Tacoma Community Foundation · Forest Foundation · Fuchsg & M Fdn Tai · Names Family Foundation · The Russell Family Foundation · Korum for Kids Foundation · The Bamford Foundation · The Norcliffe Foundation · Sequoia Foundation · Kilworth Florence Char Tr Fndn · Credit Unions in the State of Washington · 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 Puyallup Watershed Initiative 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 Puyallup Watershed Initiative?
Find your warmest path to Puyallup Watershed Initiative 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.