· Private foundation
Star Peak Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
92% of Star Peak Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Montana Community Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 1 organization directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Star Peak Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 6 organizations, $74k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k2 grants · $9k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $65k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ETHAN MURRAY FUND | $25,000 |
| PROJECT ASCENT | $16,000 |
| MONTANA FOOD BANK NETWORK | $12,000 |
| SANDERS COUNTY COALITION FOR FAMILIES | $12,000 |
| KANIKSU LAND TRUST INC | $7,000 |
| FOOD FOR OUR CHILDREN | $2,000 |
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 (FY18–23, $42k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 38% of Star Peak Foundation’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.
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 +84% since the first grant, against -7% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2023, 2 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- MFMONTANA FOOD BANK NETWORK INC4× · 2018–2023 · $61k · revenue +99%
- SCSanders Co Coalition For Families2× · 2019–2023 · $27k · revenue +84%
- BCBONNER COMMUNITY FOOD CENTER INC3× · 2018–2022 · $15k · revenue +73%
Funded once
- CCCommunity Cancer Services Incone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue -13%
- CNCancer Network of Sanders Countyone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue -36%
- BCBONNER COUNTY HOMELESS TASK FORCEone grant, 2019 · $15k · revenue -7%
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.
Our mission is to work with landowners and communities to conserve the lands we love, now and forever, and to enrich connections to the natural world.
The organization's mission is to maintain, restore, and perpetuate public access to the boundaries of all Montana's public lands and waters.
The mission of The Blackfoot Challenge is to coordinate efforts that will conserve and enhance the natural resources and rural way of life in the Blackfoot Watershed for present and future generations.
The Idaho Wildlife Federation (IWF) promotes the conservation of Idaho's wildlife heritage and legacy of sporting opportunities for the current and future generations.
The organization is dedicated to restoring water quality, fisheries, and wildlife, and protecting the agricultural heritage and open space of the upper clark fork river basin of southwest montana. the organization pursues these goals by…
The mission of the teton regional land trust is to conserve working farms and ranches, fish and wildlife habitat, and scenic open spaces in eastern idaho for this and future generations.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Montana Community Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Bonner County Homeless Task Force. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 17 of the 27 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 MONTANA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Innovia Foundation ↗
- Who funds MONTANA FOOD BANK NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds Sanders Co Coalition For Families ↗
- Who funds Kaniksu Land Trust Inc ↗
- Who funds Community Cancer Services Inc ↗
- Who funds Cancer Network of Sanders County ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ASCENT ↗
- Who funds BONNER COMMUNITY FOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BONNER COUNTY HOMELESS TASK FORCE ↗
- Who funds ROCK CREEK ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds Lower Clark Fork Watershed Group ↗
- Who funds CLARK FORK COALITION ↗
- Who funds FOOD FOR OUR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds Sandpoint Area Seniors Inc ↗
- Who funds The Paradise Center ↗
- Who funds THE MONTANA LAND RELIANCE ↗
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: The Avista Foundation · Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation · Equinox Foundation Inc · Innovia Foundation · Idaho Community Foundation Inc · Bnsf Railway Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Star Peak 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.