· Private foundation
The Greater Montana Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k4 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $332k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MONTANA BROADCASTERS ASSOCIATION | $47,737 |
| FRIENDS OF MONTANA PBS | $35,000 |
| MAPS MEDIA INSTITUTE | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $30,000 |
| FROM THE HEART PRODUCTIONS | $30,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM | $24,000 |
| FRIENDS OF MONTANA PBS (COOKE CITY AVALANCHE) | $20,000 |
| MONTANA FREE PRESS | $20,000 |
| GLACIER NATIONAL PARK CONSERVANCY (RISE UP MONTANA) | $10,000 |
| VOX BOX ARTS COLLECTIVE (FIRESIDE FILMS) | $10,000 |
| MONTANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| WORKING QUIET BUTTE (BEYOND YELLOWSTONE) | $10,000 |
| BIG SKY FILM INSTITUTE (WHEN THEY WERE HERE) | $10,000 |
| INCLUSIVE OUTDOORS PROJECT (LOTUS PRODUCERS) | $10,000 |
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 (FY24–24, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 5% of The Greater Montana 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.
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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +80% since the first grant, against +28% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 20 since wound down; 11 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, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $108k 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
- MMMAPS MEDIA INSTITUTE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $427k · revenue +80%
- FOFRIENDS OF MONTANA PBS INC8× · 2017–2024 · $348k · revenue +566%
- MFMONTANA FREE PRESS7× · 2018–2024 · $130k · revenue +635%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $35k
- TUTHE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $30k · revenue +41%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF MONTANA SCHOOL OF RADIO-TVone grant, 2019 · $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.
To promote public policy solutions that provide increased access to economic opportunities, greater individual freedoms and encourage greater participation in public matters by providing research and recommendation on public policy
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.
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 state parks foundation raises private support to enhance the visitors experience and build advocates for montanas state parks and recreation heritage.
The Pulp is dedicated to publishing accurate and relevant news and information that informs and engages the people of Missoula and western Montana. Through our journalism we aim to promote discourse, foster civic engagement and create…
Funding and conducting research on issues associated with the ongoing development, infrastructure, historical preservation, and planning of Missoula Midtown and operating educational programs to educate the public about these issues.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Montana History Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Bear Hug Cattle Co. 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 21 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 76 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 MAPS MEDIA INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MONTANA PBS INC ↗
- Who funds MONTANA BROADCASTERS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MONTANA FREE PRESS ↗
- Who funds From The Heart Productions ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MONTANA HISTORY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BEAR HUG CATTLE CO ↗
- Who funds EXTREME HISTORY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Thunderheart Media Inc ↗
- Who funds USS MONTANA COMMITTEE INC ↗
- Who funds BIG SKY FILM INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds MEAGHER COUNTY STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds CROW LANGUAGE CONSORTIUM INC ↗
- Who funds ONE MONTANA ↗
- Who funds THE MYRNA LOY ↗
- Who funds MONTANA WILDERNESS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE COMMON GROUND PROJECT ↗
- Who funds LEADERSHIP MONTANA INC ↗
- Who funds MONTANA CASAGAL ASSOCIATION ↗
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 · Humanities Montana · Montana Community Foundation Inc · Montana History Foundation · The High Stakes Foundation · Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation · The Arthur M Blank Family Foundation · M J Murdock Charitable Trust · Treacy Foundation · Headwaters Health Foundation of Western Montana · Otto Bremer Trust · Sample 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 Greater Montana 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 Greater Montana Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Greater Montana 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.