· Private foundation
The Behnke 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.
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 · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $26k
- $250k+1 grant · $307k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CORNISH COLLEGE OF THE ARTS | $307,202 |
| WELLSPRING FAMILY SERVICES | $5,869 |
| FIFTH AVENUE THEATER | $5,500 |
| OVERLAKE MEDICAL CENTER | $3,000 |
| SKIDMORE COLLEGE | $2,500 |
| THE LISA MCGRAW FIGURE SKATING FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD GRANT NW | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| LITTLE BIT THERAPECUTIC RIDING CENTER | $1,500 |
| THE COMMUNITY LIBRARY | $1,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO | $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 (FY17–25, $59k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, 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.
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.
23 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 1 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- SCSKIDMORE COLLEGE8× · 2017–2025 · $22k · revenue +34%
- FHFRED HUTCHINSON CANCER RESEARCH CENTER7× · 2017–2023 · $18k · revenue +27%
- WPWOODLAND PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY8× · 2017–2024 · $7k · revenue +89%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $7k
- CCHILDHAVENgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $5k · revenue +31%
- OMOVERLAKE MEDICAL CENTER & CLINICSgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $2k · revenue +31%
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.
We conduct fundamental infectious disease research to generate critical new knowledge about pathogens and their interactions with see schedule o for continuationhumans to enable the discovery and development of novel interventions,…
Seattle children's healthcare system (schs) is engaged in activities relating to the provision of health care services to infants, children, and adolescents, delivering and improving the delivery and the quality of those services through…
To present symphonic music of the highest quality in a distinctive way for the cultural enrichment, education, engagement and enjoyment of the people of our community.
The oregon shakespeare festival creates world-class theater, revealing our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic plays, and inspiring a love of our art form for current and future generations.
We take a joyful, community-oriented approach to raising engaged citizens, deep learners, and brave adventurers with the skills, creativity, and heart needed to better the world.
Seattle humane promotes the human-animal bond by saving and serving pets in need, regardless of age, ability, circumstance or geography.
Seattle children's guild association advocates for seattle children's hospital through volunteer, philanthropic and community endeavors to ensure hope, excellent care and advanced cures for children.
Seattle academy is a dynamic community that challenges students to question, imagine, and create in order to contribute to a changing world.
Siff is a seattle-based 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit dedicated to the creation of vibrant experiences and spaces that champion film discovery and arts education.
To produce, in a humanistic tradition, health care professionals and biomedical knowledge that will enhance and extend the quality of life in our communities.
University of puget sound, as a community of learning, maintains a strong commitment to teaching excellence, scholarly engagement, and fruitful student-faculty interaction. the mission of the university is to develop in its students'…
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Seattle Children's Hospital and the most unlike its peers is Lisa Mcgraw Figure Skating Fdn. 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 51 years old; the field is 13. 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 — 4% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 38 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 FORTISSIMO ↗
- Who funds WELLSPRING FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds SKIDMORE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FRED HUTCHINSON CANCER RESEARCH CENTER ↗
- Who funds WOODLAND PARK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds OVERLAKE HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds CHILDHAVEN ↗
- Who funds KINDERING CENTER ↗
- Who funds LISA MCGRAW FIGURE SKATING FDN ↗
- Who funds FERAL CARE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO ↗
- Who funds LITTLE BIT THERAPEUTIC RIDING CENTER ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE THEATRE GROUP ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds OVERLAKE MEDICAL CENTER & CLINICS ↗
- Who funds THE SEATTLE AQUARIUM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HIGHER GROUND USA INC ↗
- Who funds HEARING SPEECH AND DEAFNESS CENTER DBA HEARING SPEECH AND DEAF CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE EVERGREEN CITY BALLET ↗
- Who funds YOUTHCARE ↗
- Who funds FIREFIGHTERS SUPPORT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Erikas Lighthouse A Beacon of Hope for Adolescent Depression ↗
- Who funds Birthday Dreams ↗
- Who funds ARTSFUND ↗
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: Puget Sound Energy Foundation · Seattle Foundation · The Norcliffe Foundation · Ash Family Foundation · Grousemont Foundation · Garneau Nicon Family Foundation · Moccasin Lake Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · United Way of King County · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc
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 The Behnke 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 The Behnke Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Behnke 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.