· Private foundation
Sequoia Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $57k
- $10k–50k39 grants · $677k
- $50k–250k11 grants · $795k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICA'S AUTOMOTIVE TRUST | $150,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| TACOMA ARTS LIVE | $85,000 |
| TACOMA ART MUSEUM | $80,000 |
| MUSEUM OF GLASS | $70,000 |
| COLLEGE SUCCESS FOUNDATION - TACOMA | $60,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND | $50,000 |
| VIRGINIA MASON FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| MARY BRIDGE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| SEATTLE SYMPHONY | $50,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF SOUTH PUGET SOUND | $50,000 |
| HELPING HAND HOUSE | $40,000 |
| GRAND TACOMA CINE CLUB | $40,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF PIERCE COUNTY | $35,000 |
| FORTERRA | $30,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $346k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% 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 +24% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
81 repeat relationships — 53 still active in FY2025, 28 since wound down; 7 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $145k 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
- AAAMERICAS AUTOMOTIVE TRUST5× · 2021–2025 · $850k · revenue +55%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION5× · 2021–2025 · $545k · revenue +11%
TACOMA ARTS LIVE5× · 2021–2025 · $515k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- WSWASHINGTON STATE BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS ASSOgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $75k · revenue +423%
- MOMUSEUM OF GLASSone grant, 2023 · $70k
- EFEMERGENCY FOOD NETWORK OF TACOMA AND PIERCE COUNTYone grant, 2022 · $50k · revenue +11%
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 empower families experiencing housing insecurity through intervention, prevention,and stabilization services.
Preserve in perpetuity the natural habitats, rural landscapes, and open spaces of the great peninsula of washington's puget sound.
United way of snohomish county improves lives for families in snohomish county by bringing people, resources, and strategy together.
Strengthening the community by providing accessible and affordable health care.
Provide and promote constructive and collaborative approaches to conflict resolution through mediation, training, facilitation, supervised visits and community education.
KCSARC is the largest and most comprehensive non-profit provider of sexual assault services in King County and Washington State. Our vision is a community free of sexual violence. Our mission is to: give voice to victims, their families,…
Housing connector partners with property owners and managers to lower barriers to housing and increase our region's affordable housing capacity.
The ywca is dedicated to eliminating racism and empowering women.
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…
The sophia way is a place of hope and change for women. we support them on their journey from homelessness to safe and stable living.
Artist Trust supports the livelihoods of artists working in all disciplines to create a more vibrant and equitable Washington State.
To increase the economic well-being and quality of life for all citizens of the region; to coordinate provincial, territorial, and state policies throughout the region; to identify and promote "models of success and to serve as a conduit…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Tacoma Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Thrive International. 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 33 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% 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 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.
93 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. 93 of the 113 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 AMERICAS AUTOMOTIVE TRUST ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TACOMA ARTS LIVE ↗
- Who funds Tacoma Art Museum ↗
- Who funds Museum of Glass ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF PIERCE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR TACOMA STUDENTS ↗
- Who funds College Success Foundation ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST IMMIGRANT RIGHTS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY ↗
- Who funds SYMPHONY TACOMA ↗
- Who funds MULTICARE FOUNDATIONS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LEADERSHIP FORUM TACOMA PIERCE COUNTY CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds R MERLE PALMER MINORITY SCHOLARSHIP ↗
- Who funds FORTERRA NW ↗
- Who funds COMPREHENSIVE MENTAL HEALTH CENTER OF TACOMA-PIERCE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON STATE BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS ASSO ↗
- Who funds YWCA PIERCE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds HILLTOP ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE ↗
- Who funds OPERA AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds DEGREES OF CHANGE ↗
- Who funds MULTICULTURAL CHILD AND FAMILY HOPE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Greater Metro Parks Foundation dba Tacoma Parks Foundation ↗
- Who funds TACOMA OPERA ASSOCIATION PROFESSIONAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds TACOMA-PIERCE COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ↗
- Who funds HELPING HAND HOUSE ↗
- Who funds EMERGENCY FOOD NETWORK OF TACOMA AND PIERCE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds MARY BRIDGE CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds THE YOUTH MARINE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
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 · The Bamford Foundation · Kilworth Florence Char Tr Fndn · Fuchsg & M Fdn Tai · Forest Foundation · The Norcliffe Foundation · Woodworth Family Foundation · Gary E Milgard Family Foundation- Sunshine · Heidner Marco J Char Trust · Ben B Cheney Foundation Inc · The Russell Family Foundation · Medina 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 Sequoia 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.
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% 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 Sequoia Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sequoia 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.