· Public charity
Rotary Club of Bellingham Foundation
Provide grants to nonprofits in the local community and scholarships for local students.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 5 grants below total $265,728 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $289,718 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $23,990 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $7k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $26k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $233k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Lighthouse Mission Ministries | $165,036 |
| Whatcom Community Foundation | $68,192 |
| Bellingham Technical College Foundation | $15,500 |
| Bellingham Technical College | $10,000 |
| Mercy Housing Northwest | $7,000 |
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 (FY20–22, $128k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +138% since the first grant, against +77% for the ones you funded once.
5 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 4% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $175k 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
- IFIPA FOUNDATION3× · 2020–2022 · $37k · revenue +194%
- MHMERCY HOUSING NORTHWEST3× · 2021–2025 · $21k · revenue +138%
RISE AGAINST HUNGER INC2× · 2018–2019 · $11k · revenue +59%
Funded once
- MHMAX HIGBEE COMMUNITY RECREATION CENTERgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $108k · revenue +50%
- SCSUN COMMUNITY SERVICEgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $106k · revenue +47%
- LPLYDIA PLACEgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $103k · revenue +89%
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.
Provide and promote constructive and collaborative approaches to conflict resolution through mediation, training, facilitation, supervised visits and community education.
Housing connector partners with property owners and managers to lower barriers to housing and increase our region's affordable housing capacity.
Rogue Climate's mission is to empower Southern Oregon communities most impacted by climate change including low-income, rural, youth, seniors & communities of color, to win climate justice by organizing for clean energy, sustainable jobs &…
Rainier Beach Action Coalition is a grassroot, Black-led organization devoted to locally driven development. It promotes quality education, living wage jobs, affordable transportation and housing, and building community capacity in…
Building changes advances equitable responses to homelessness in washington state, with a focus on children, youth, and families. we work at the intersection of housing, education, and health systems, partnering with communities and public…
To cultivate leaders and community partnerships to advance environmental justice.
Provide food for individuals in need
Promote fair and affordable housing for low income families, free from the vestiges of segregation and discrimination.
Enhancing sustainable trail experiences in the Methow Valley.
The Washington Housing Alliance Action Fund elects candidates, educates voters and decision-makers, and amplifies the voices and priorities of people and communities most impacted by housing instability and homelessness.
The wcc foundation strengthens educational opportunities by providing student scholarships, supporting faculty and staff development, and assisting with key college initiatives.
Creating a greener, healthier, more equitable, and better Washington for all through community outreach, network building, and advocacy for conservation and outdoor recreation funding.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Whatcom Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Ipa Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
12 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. 12 of the 19 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 WHATCOM COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Bellingham Technical College Foundation ↗
- Who funds MAX HIGBEE COMMUNITY RECREATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds SUN COMMUNITY SERVICE ↗
- Who funds LYDIA PLACE ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Whatcom Mountain Bike Coalition ↗
- Who funds Bellingham Bay Community Boating Center ↗
- Who funds IPA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ROTARY FOUNDATION OF ROTARY INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds MERCY HOUSING NORTHWEST ↗
- Who funds RISE AGAINST HUNGER 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: Whatcom Community Foundation · Mount Baker Foundation · Eleanor and Henry Jansen Foundation · Puget Sound Energy Foundation · United Way of Whatcom County · Chuckanut Health Foundation · First Fed Foundation · North Sound Accountable Community of Health · Thomas & Martina Horn Foundation · Alternatives to Hunger Bellingham Food Bank · Little Family Legacy Foundation · Jerry H Walton 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 Rotary Club of Bellingham 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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Find your warmest path to Rotary Club of Bellingham 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.