How much did The Burning Foundation grant in FY2025?

Environment$5.9MHealth$728kAnimals$398kHuman Services$221kPublic Safety & Disaster$97kYouth Development$75kArts & Culture$33kHousing & Shelter$27kOther$0

02FY2025 · 56 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

$20,000

Median grant

States reached

$13M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
WATERWATCH OF OREGON	$30,000
SILVIX RESOURCES	$30,000
PUGET SOUNDKEEPER ALLIANCE	$30,000
LEGACY FOREST DEFENSE COALITION	$30,000
FRIENDS OF THE SAN JUANS	$30,000
NORTH CASCADES INSTITUTE	$25,000
PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF THE COLUMBIA WILLAMETTE INC	$25,000
OREGON DESERT LAND TRUST	$25,000
SKAGIT LAND TRUST	$25,000
CASCADE FOREST CONSERVANCY	$25,000
WASHINGTON ASSOCIATION OF LAND TRUSTS	$25,000
RE SOURCES	$25,000
SPOKANE RIVERKEEPER	$25,000
FUTUREWISE	$25,000
GREATER HELLS CANYON COUNCIL	$25,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $221k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 83% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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 7% of The Burning 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. Read by recipient address, 94% of the giving stays in WA; read by stated purpose it is 89% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.

The Burning Foundationlessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address · 5.2% directed abroad (not shown)

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.

03Your edge

repeat funding

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.

95%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$7.2M · 78 repeat orgs$357k to everyone else

78 repeat relationships — 51 still active in FY2025, 27 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$7.2M

$312k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+39%

+82%

Still filing today

95%

64%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $45k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EnvironmentHealthAnimalsHuman ServicesEducationScience & TechOther

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

PS
PUGET SOUNDKEEPER ALLIANCE
9× · 2017–2025 · $208k · revenue +8%
CN
CONSERVATION NW
8× · 2017–2024 · $185k · revenue +79%
RO
Room One
9× · 2017–2025 · $183k · revenue +361%

Funded once

EARTHJUSTICEgraduated
one grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +82%
SN
SUSTAINABLE NORTHWESTgraduated
one grant, 2021 · $15k · revenue +224%
ONE COMMUNITY HEALTH
one grant, 2024 · $15k · revenue 0%

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

Coast Fork Willamette Watershed Council

The Coast Fork Willamette Watershed Council is a local nonprofit organization that strives to enhance and restore habitat for fish and wildlife our community and for future generations. Our Board of Directors consists of seven members with…

Environment

Washington Forest Law Center

Dedicated to protecting the world's natural environment on behalf of the public by serving as a public interest law firm. refer to schedule o, part iii, line 4a, for list of litigated cases or advocacy work.

—

Northwest Environmental Advocates

Work through advocacy and education to use federal environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act to protect and restore water quality and habit in the Pacific Northwest and nationwide.

Environment

Southern Oregon Land Conservancy Inc

To conserve and enhance land in southern oregon to sustain our human and natural communities forever.

Environment

Palouse Land Trust Inc

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.

Environment

CalWild

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.

—

Wild Salmon Rivers

To conserve functioning salmon/steelhead eco-system at watershed levels, integrate angling activities with basic scientific research, collect raw data, monitor environmental functions, salmon/steelhead population dynamics, public…

Environment

Crooked River Watershed Council

To promote stewardship of the Crooked River Watershed and its resources and to ensure sustainable watershed health, functions, and uses for optimal conservation and benefit.

Environment

Northwest Environmental Defense Center

Nedc's mission is to work toward a future in which the pacific northwest leads the nation in developing, implementing & enforcing strong laws and regulations that protect the environment & human health, and where our governments &…

—

Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership

Environment

10000 Years Institute

10,000 Years Institute evaluates the ecological effects of human activities on natural environments, and promotes the maintenance and restoration of ecological integrity through the integration of reliable scientific information, sound…

Unclassified

Nw Energy Coalition

The NW Energy Coalition is an alliance of over 100 environmental, civic, and human service organizations, utilities, and businesses in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia, plus many individual members. The NW Energy…

—

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is 1000 Friends of Oregon and the most unlike its peers is Ecosource Native Seed & Restoration. 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 31 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.

The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 12% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

1%1/98

the rest of the field

12%

5,971/48,216

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.

05the grantee network

97 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. 97 of the 109 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.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

95/97

Grantees still filing

71/97

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Environment$4,259,000Other$1,454,300Health$709,000Animals$632,000Human Services$221,000Education$167,000Public Safety & Disaster$97,000

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.

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.

PatagoniaorgCA58.3× affinity33 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Patagoniaorg · The Oregon Community Foundation · The Lazar Foundation · Meyer Memorial Trust · The Rose Foundation for Communities the Environment · Seattle Foundation · Jubitz Family Foundation · The Bullitt Foundation · The Northwest Fund for the Environment · Charlotte y Martin Foundation-Ima · The Hugh and Jane Ferguson Foundation · The Roundhouse 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 Burning 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

14get no government money at all

29report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

3rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

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.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Burning Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The Burning 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.

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home