· Private foundation
The Bower Charitable 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $33k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $93k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| North Coast Environmental Center | $32,500 |
| Environmental Protection Info Cente | $30,000 |
| Klamath Forest Alliance | $30,000 |
| Solar Cookers International | $5,000 |
| Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology | $5,000 |
| Alliance For Global Justice | $5,000 |
| Salmon River Restoration Council | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| Forest Service Employees For Env Et | $5,000 |
| Shasta Environmental Alliance | $2,500 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% of your 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.
12 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 3 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, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- KFKLAMATH FOREST ALLIANCE6× · 2020–2025 · $120k · revenue +1% · 47% of their budget
- SRSALMON RIVER RESTORATION COUNCIL4× · 2021–2025 · $20k · revenue +57%
- SCSolar Cookers International4× · 2021–2025 · $20k · revenue +81%
Funded once
- SASafe Alternatives Forest Environmenone grant, 2021 · $6k
- FOFRIENDS OF THE EEL RIVERone grant, 2021 · $5k · 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.
SEACC's mission is to protect the special places of the world's largest temperate rainforest, promote conservation, and advocate for sustainability in human use of natural resources. Inspired by the land, wildlife, cultures, and…
The Sierra Fund (TSF) is a non-profit organization with a mission to restore ecosystem and community resiliency in the Sierra Nevada.
At Yosemite Rivers Alliance, we unite conservation and community to protect and restore the three rivers that ?ow through the Yosemite Regionthe Tuolumne, Stanislaus, and Merced.
The Friends of the Inyos mission is to protect, and care for, the lands and waters of Californias Eastern Sierra.
The specific purpose of this corporation is to channel public concern for the environment into action in the publics interest.
To provide science-based strategies for wildlife and land conservation.
Promoting economic sustainability
The California Wilderness Coalition protects the natural landscapes that make California unique, providing clean air and water, a home to wildlife, and a place for recreation and spiritual renewal.
Educate the public on forest conservation issues in New Mexico
Our mission is to fight against fossil fuel executives and industries that have turned our communities into dumping grounds for toxic waste, poisoning our air, water, lan, and bodies. We organize to oppose giant oil refineries, dirty…
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
The Mission of Sonoma Ecology Center is to work with our community to enhance and sustain ecological health in the Sonoma valley.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Sierra Club Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Solar Cookers International. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 15 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 Northcoast Environmental Center ↗
- Who funds KLAMATH FOREST ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds SALMON RIVER RESTORATION COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds Solar Cookers International ↗
- Who funds FOREST SERVICE EMPLOYEES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS INC ↗
- Who funds Alliance for Global Justice Corp ↗
- Who funds KLAMATH-SISKIYOU WILDLANDS CENTER ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MADRE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE EEL RIVER ↗
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: Patagoniaorg · 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 The Bower Charitable 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 Bower Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Bower Charitable 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.