· Private foundation
The Lisa Wade Foundation
Its FY2023 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k8 grants · $19k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $22k
- $250k+1 grant · $634k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRANKEL-WADE DONOR ADVISED FUND | $633,997 |
| THRESHOLD FOUNDATION | $11,500 |
| UNITE AMERICA INSTITUTE | $10,000 |
| SSP EDDY HOUSE | $5,000 |
| SIERRA NEVADA JOURNEYS | $5,000 |
| OREGON NATURAL DESERT ASSOCIATION | $3,000 |
| TAHOE FUND | $2,500 |
| WINDY25 MEMORIAL FUND | $1,060 |
| ALLIANCE FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $501 |
| BREAKING WALLS | $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 (FY18–18, $911) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +56% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2023, 7 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 3% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $655k 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
- TFTHRESHOLD FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2023 · $90k · revenue +7%
WILD SALMON CENTER2× · 2021–2022 · $10k · revenue +115%- TFTAHOE FUND2× · 2022–2023 · $8k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $5k
- WEWomen's Earth and Climate Action Networkgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +584%
- PPPROTOTYPE PGH INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +45%
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.
The Climate Center is a climate and energy policy nonprofit working to rapidly reduce climate pollution at scale, starting in California.
Actionaid is an international network building a just, equitable, and sustainable world in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of poverty and injustice. actionaid usa is the u.s. branch of actionaid international, which works in…
Rogue Climate's mission is to empower Southern Oregon communities most impacted by climate change including low-income, rural, youth, seniors & communities of color, to win climate justice by organizing for clean energy, sustainable jobs &…
Wildearth guardians works to protect and restore the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the american west.
Global Forest Generation restores and protects forest ecosystems in partnership with grassroots leaders and local communities across vast landscapes which play a critical role in preserving water, protecting biodiversity, storing carbon,…
To strenghten people's ability to guarantee their individual and collective right to a healthy environment, via the development, implementation, and effective enforcement of national and international law.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
Transform works to ensure that people of all incomes thrive in a world safe from climate chaos.
To protect the rainforest and advance the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. We partner with Indigenous communities in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon Basin's…
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
Educational & charitable. to provide legal and scientific information to public interest attorneys and scientists in numerous countries.
The union of concerned scientists puts rigorous, independent science into action, developing solutions and advocating for a healthy, safe, and just future.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Voice of Witness a Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation and the most unlike its peers is Breaking Walls Inc. 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 22 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 47 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 THRESHOLD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IMPACT A VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds Warrior Films Inc ↗
- Who funds WILD SALMON CENTER ↗
- Who funds UNITE AMERICA INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds TAHOE FUND ↗
- Who funds THE SAFE HOUSE EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds HIAS INC ↗
- Who funds Women's Earth and Climate Action Network ↗
- Who funds SIERRA NEVADA JOURNEYS ↗
- Who funds OREGON NATURAL DESERT ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PROTOTYPE PGH INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKING WALLS INC ↗
- Who funds Belladonna Sanctuary ↗
- Who funds MAGIC THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds Independent Arts & Media ↗
- Who funds ACTBLUE CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds ART WITHOUT LIMITS ↗
- Who funds High Desert Food & Farm Alliance ↗
- Who funds OREGON WALKS ↗
- Who funds CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF FOOD BANKS ↗
- Who funds WATER MISSIONS INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds NETWORK FOR GOOD ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds KARAT SCHOOL PROJECT ↗
- Who funds VOICE OF WITNESS A NONPROFIT PUBLIC BENEFIT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds PEAR ↗
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: Meyer Memorial Trust · Tides Foundation · Impactassetsinc · Marin Community Foundation · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · The Roundhouse Foundation · The Oregon Community Foundation · The Autzen Foundation · Patagoniaorg · Greater Washington Community Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Lisa Wade 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.
- Hias Inc — 88% of income from government
- Wild Salmon Center — 49% of income from government
- Saving Grace — 48% of income from government
- Deschutes Land Trust — 46% of income from government
- High Desert Food & Farm Alliance — 45% of income from government
- Oregon Walks — 15% of income from government
- Oregon Natural Desert Association — 9% of income from government
- Pear — 1% 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 Lisa Wade Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Lisa Wade 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.