· Private foundation
Robert & Elizabeth Fergus Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k60 grants · $113k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ALFRED BRAUN HUT SYSTEM | $10,000 |
| THEATERWORKS | $10,000 |
| CONSERVATION NORTHWEST | $8,000 |
| RIOS TO RIVERS | $6,125 |
| WELLESLEY COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| MULTICULTURAL MUSIC FELLOWSHIP | $5,000 |
| PICKFORD FILM CENTER | $5,000 |
| BEYOND FISTULA | $5,000 |
| EARTH ISLAND INSTITUTE (SACRED LANDS) | $3,000 |
| CAF AMERICA (CAMERAS WITHOUT BORDERS) | $3,000 |
| BALLETMET | $3,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO GRAHAM SCHOOL | $3,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO GRAHAM SCHOOL | $2,500 |
| MIDDLEBURY | $2,500 |
| METHOW CONSERVANCY | $2,500 |
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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $23k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 23% 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 +37% since the first grant, against +22% for the ones you funded once.
100 repeat relationships — 44 still active in FY2024, 56 since wound down; 16 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, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
- CNCONSERVATION NW8× · 2017–2024 · $64k · revenue +79%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION5× · 2017–2021 · $50k · revenue +79%
- WCWellesley College8× · 2017–2024 · $46k · revenue +63%
Funded once
- PAPALO ALTO RECREATION FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue -4%
- PPROMUSICAone grant, 2022 · $3k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $3k
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
Be a catalyst! Ignite our community's passion for nature and science.
Grist is an independent, non profit media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI) uses data-driven advocacy and litigation to fight for forests, communities and the climate.
To investigate, research, write, publish, present conferences and teach with respect to global, regional, transboundary, and comparative environmental issues and to make the findings from such activities available to the general public; to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Trust for Public Land and the most unlike its peers is Court Theatre Fund. 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 37 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
86 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. 86 of the 138 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 CONSERVATION NW ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Wellesley College ↗
- Who funds MULTICULTURAL MUSIC FELLOWSHIP ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds Rocky Mountain Institute ↗
- Who funds KQED INC ↗
- Who funds Little Traverse Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds Earth Island Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds BEYOND FISTULA ↗
- Who funds SKAGIT LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds METHOW CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds KULSHAN COMMUNITY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds North Cascades Institute ↗
- Who funds THE PALO ALTO COMMUNITY FUND ↗
- Who funds CHARITIES AID FOUNDATION AMERICA ↗
- Who funds GERMAN VILLAGE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL AIDS INTERFAITH ALLIANCE (GAIA) ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ASPEN CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES ↗
- Who funds SCHOOL FUND ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN BELLINGHAM ASSOCIATION DBA DOWNTOWN BELLINGHAM PARTNERSHIP ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PICKFORD FILM CENTER ↗
- Who funds WHATCOM LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
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 · L Brands Foundation · The Palo Alto Community Fund · Whatcom Community Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Philanthropic Ventures Foundation · Columbus Foundation · American Electric Power Foundation · Palo Alto Rotary Club Annual Charities Inc · Jacob L and Lillian Holtzmann Foundation · Aspen Business Center Foundation · Islands Fund
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 Robert & Elizabeth Fergus 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.
- Freedom Reads Inc — 12% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Robert & Elizabeth Fergus Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Robert & Elizabeth Fergus 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.