· Private foundation
The Maxfield Foundation
Its FY2023 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of The Maxfield Foundation’s FY2023 grant dollars went to The Bessemer National Gift Fund, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2023 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2021, the last year The Maxfield Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 9 organizations, $2M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2021
- Under $10k10 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $25k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $100k
- $250k+1 grant · $2.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RICE UNIVERSITY | $2,300,000 |
| SANTE FE INSTITUTE | $100,000 |
| AMAZON CONSERVATION | $25,000 |
| ACCESS FUND | $4,000 |
| SIERRA COMMUNITY HOUSE | $3,500 |
| TRUCKEE DONNER LAND TRUST | $3,000 |
| TRUCKEE ROUNDHOUSE | $3,000 |
| THE TAHOE FUND | $2,500 |
| GATEWAY MOUNTAIN CENTER | $2,000 |
| HIGH FIVES FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| ROCKER MEMORIAL SKATEPARK | $1,000 |
| NORTH TAHOE ARTS | $1,000 |
| I-SCHOOL | $1,000 |
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, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 86% of The Maxfield 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, 48% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 39% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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.
20 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2021, 8 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2021 (too recent to call). Read against FY2021, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2022, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- WMWilliam Marsh Rice University2× · 2021–2022 · $2.6M · revenue +28%
SANTA FE INSTITUTE5× · 2017–2022 · $350k · revenue +219%- TATHE ACCESS FUND5× · 2017–2021 · $17k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- SSFIone grant, 2019 · $50k
- MAMONTALVO ASSOCIATIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $30k · revenue +83%
- LTLAKE TAHOE SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $5k
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.
Sierra watch secures conservation outcomes to protect the natural resources, mountain communities, and timeless values of the tahoe sierra.
The Truckee Trails Foundation (TTF) is working towards a system of trails and bikeways in and around Truckee, California that will connect people and places, reduce our community's dependence on automobiles, and improve our physical,…
The Foundation envisions a thriving community created through meaningful philanthropy, inclusive communication, and the willingness to explore possibilities together.
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 Sierra Fund (TSF) is a non-profit organization with a mission to restore ecosystem and community resiliency in the Sierra Nevada.
The truckee river watershed council was founded to implement locally developed public-private collaborative solutions to protect and improve water quality and biological resources for the sustainable environmental and economic health of…
The Sierra State Parks Foundation provides critically needed financial and professional support to the Lake Tahoe-Donner Sierra State Parks for Education, Restoration, and Cultural and Environmental Preservation in partnership with…
To advance the natural history, conservation and ecosystem knowledge of the Tahoe region through science, education and outreach.
The mission of the teton regional land trust is to conserve working farms and ranches, fish and wildlife habitat, and scenic open spaces in eastern idaho for this and future generations.
To plan, steward, interpret, promote, and sustain a system of four-season trails and public access to natural areas in the Mammoth Lakes and Eastern Sierra Nevada region in the state of California while protecting its natural resources.
Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship is creating and maintaining world-class trails responsibly, sustainably, and collectively.
Preserving and enhancing the habitat of wildlife, such as sandhill cranes, waterfowl, raptors, which habitat expenses are supported by agricultural activities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Tahoe Fund and the most unlike its peers is William Marsh Rice University. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
19 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. 19 of the 34 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 THE BESSEMER GIVING FUND ↗
- Who funds William Marsh Rice University ↗
- Who funds SANTA FE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds AMAZON CONSERVATION TEAM ↗
- Who funds LUCILE PACKARD FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH ↗
- Who funds MONTALVO ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE ACCESS FUND ↗
- Who funds TAHOE FUND ↗
- Who funds GATEWAY MOUNTAIN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds TRUCKEE DONNER LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds CHARITYSMITH NONPROFIT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TRUCKEE ROUNDHOUSE ↗
- Who funds TAHOE TRUCKEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPERATION SURF ↗
- Who funds REVERT FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care Inc ↗
- Who funds THE WILDCAT SANCTUARY ↗
- Who funds WARRIOR FOUNDATION FREEDOM STATION ↗
- Who funds North Tahoe Arts ↗
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: Tahoe Community Foundation · Martis Camp Community Foundation Dba Martis Camp Foundation · Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation · Marin Community Foundation · The Bessemer Giving Fund · Greater Horizons · The San Francisco Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Silicon Valley Community Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust 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 Maxfield 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.