· Public charity
The Contingent
THE CONTINGENT empowers leaders and mobilizes community for the common good.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OUR GIVING TABLE | $100,000 |
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 (FY20–20, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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.
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.
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.
unite oregon action works across urban and rural divides to build a unified political, intercultural movement for justice in oregon. we are led by people of color, immigrants and refugees, rural communities, and people experiencing poverty.
Help create a more equitable entrepreneurial ecosystem in Washington State.
To connect underrepresented communities with nature.
To provide resources and funding to formerly incarcerated individuals.
To foster bridges of care, uniting and empowering Black, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander communities in the West Portland Metro Area through education, mentorship, and cultural advocacy.
Support bipoc creatives in the northwest
Develop educational network to communicate historical and scientific information empasizing natural and cultural resources to pacific northwest.
Taking Ownership is a community and reparations-based organization in Portland, Oregon founded with the intention to activate and utilize community members and their resources for equitable change. Together we renovate and revive…
In 2024, IAF Pacific continued its work of connecting and strengthening broad-based alliances throughout the Pacific region.Through its Building Partnerships for Collaborative Action initiativethe organization supported Indigenous and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Coalition of Communities of Color and the most unlike its peers is National Association to Advance Black Birth. 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 13 years old; the field is 16. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
14 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. 14 of the 420 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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.
Open a dossier: Micro Enterprise Services of Oregon · Urban League of Portland Inc · Gray Family Foundation · The Collins Foundation · Meyer Memorial Trust · The Oregon Community Foundation · 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 Contingent 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.
- Elso Inc — 100% of income from government
- Coalition of Communities of Color — 15% of income from government
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 Contingent?
Find your warmest path to The Contingent 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.