· Private foundation
Susan Scott Heyneman Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k26 grants · $75k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $125k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Art House Billings | $25,000 |
| Northern Plains Resource Council | $25,000 |
| Alberta Bair Theater | $20,000 |
| High Country News | $15,000 |
| Montana Chamber Music Society | $10,000 |
| Montana Youth Symphony | $10,000 |
| Billings Family YMCA | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Bair Bait Dance | $8,000 |
| Sandstone Preservation Community | $5,000 |
| Powder River Basin Resource Council | $4,000 |
| Sheridan Community Land Trust | $4,000 |
| Our Montana Inc | $4,000 |
| Stillwater Protective Association | $4,000 |
| Absarokee Volunteer Fire Department | $4,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $36k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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.
41 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2024, 17 since wound down; 10 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, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $74k 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
- HCHIGH COUNTRY NEWS4× · 2019–2024 · $78k · revenue +3%
- NPNORTHERN PLAINS RESOURCE COUNCIL3× · 2019–2024 · $75k · revenue +66%
- TLThe Land Institute3× · 2019–2021 · $50k · revenue +105%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $35k
- NPNational Public Radio Centerone grant, 2023 · $30k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $25k
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.
Cowboy state daily's mission is to provide high-quality local and statewide reporting on the issues that impact wyoming, featuring stories that capture wyoming's wonderful "small town with long streets" vibe.
Greater yellowstone coalition works with all people to protect the lands, waters, and wildlife of the greater yellowstone ecosystem, now and for future generations.
Uniting and mobilizing communities to keep montana wild.
To heighten the public's awareness of conservation districts and their activities as well as to promote soil and water conservation.
To promote science-based wildlife management that fosters ecosystem health and dynamic equilibrium between species throughout the state of wyoming.
The wyoming outdoor council's mission is to protect wyoming's environment and quality of life now and for future generations.
The mblc exists to encourage and enact business-friendly policies that create good-paying jobs and make montana a better place to live. the primary purpose of the mblc is to educate the public on important business issues, enable citizens…
The montana preservation alliance (mpa) saves and protects montana's historic places, traditional landscapes, and cultural heritage. we are the only statewide, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing montanans with the resources…
Wildlife and natural ecosystems to safeguard biological diversity for current and future generations.
To collectively serve as a catalyst for engagement and bonding of people to our wildlife and public lands in montana through a sense of place, education, access, research and stewardship.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bare Bait Dance and the most unlike its peers is The Food Group Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 43 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 72 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 HIGH COUNTRY NEWS ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN PLAINS RESOURCE COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds The Land Institute ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds ALBERTA BAIR THEATER CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds BARE BAIT DANCE ↗
- Who funds POWDER RIVER BASIN RESOURCE COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds WESTERN HERITAGE CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE FOOD GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE RIVER PARKS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds TUMBLEWEED RUNAWAY PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds SHERIDAN COMMUNITY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds Northern Wyoming Community College Foundation ↗
- Who funds WYO THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds FILM INDEPENDENT ↗
- Who funds Billings Food Bank Inc ↗
- Who funds MISSOULA ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds BILLINGS FAMILY YMCA INC ↗
- Who funds MONTANA YOUTH SYMPHONY ↗
- Who funds Stillwater Historical Society ↗
- Who funds SHERIDAN HIGH SCHOOL BOOSTER CLUB ↗
- Who funds BARNARD COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MONTANA CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Humanities Montana ↗
- Who funds THE MONTANA LAND RELIANCE ↗
- Who funds MONTANA RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE ↗
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: First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Montana Community Foundation Inc · Homer A Scott & Mildred S Scott Foundation · Dan & Jeanne Scott Family Foundation · Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation · Sample Foundation Inc · Billings Community Foundation · Charles M Bair Family Trust · Treacy Foundation · Gianforte Family Charitable Trust · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · First Interstate Bank Centennial Youth 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 Susan Scott Heyneman 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Susan Scott Heyneman Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Susan Scott Heyneman 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.