· Private foundation
The Northwest Fund for the Environment
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k38 grants · $49k
- $10k–50k31 grants · $350k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COLUMBIA RIVERKEEPER | $20,000 |
| RE SOURCES | $20,000 |
| FUTUREWISE | $20,000 |
| CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL LAW & POLICY | $20,000 |
| OLYMPIC FOREST COALITION | $10,000 |
| CASCADE FOREST CONSERVANCY | $10,000 |
| SPOKANE RIVERKEEPER | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN WHITEWATER | $10,000 |
| WASHINGTON CONSERVATION ACTION EDUCATION FUND | $10,000 |
| PUGET SOUND SAGE | $10,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE SAN JUANS | $10,000 |
| TROUT UNLIMITED INC | $10,000 |
| FRONT AND CENTERED | $10,000 |
| TRANSPORTATION CHOICES COALITION | $10,000 |
| SAVE OUR WILD SALMON COALITION | $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 (FY17–19, $13k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 16% of The Northwest Fund for the Environment’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, 84% of the giving stays in WA; read by stated purpose it is 76% — 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.
45 repeat relationships — 34 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down.
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, 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
- CRColumbia Riverkeeper6× · 2017–2024 · $108k · revenue +92%
- RSRE SOURCES8× · 2017–2024 · $101k · revenue +9%
- PSPUGET SOUNDKEEPER ALLIANCE5× · 2017–2024 · $84k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- ARAMERICAN RIVERSone grant, 2019 · $15k
- WPWashington Progress Fundgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +32%
- ONORCA NETWORKone grant, 2022 · $13k · revenue +22%
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 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…
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…
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 &…
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…
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…
Wwt's mission is to protect and restore water in rivers and streams across washington state. washington water trust restores and protects water in rivers and streams and promotes sustainable freshwater management in washington, and, more…
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.
The Idaho Wildlife Federation (IWF) promotes the conservation of Idaho's wildlife heritage and legacy of sporting opportunities for the current and future generations.
The foundation board is comprised of members with diverse backgrounds and expertise who devote their shared commitment and passion to collectively support protection and restoration of the washington coast region salmon by providing…
Cascadia wildlands defends and restores cacasia's wild ecosystems in the forests,in the courts, and in the streets. we envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and…
Promoting economic sustainability
Support ecosystem-based wildlife management by increasing public awareness of wildlife issues, responding to information requests, advocating for science-based wildlife habitat management through proposal and comment submissions, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Washington Conservation Action Education Fund and the most unlike its peers is Kettle Range Conservation Group. 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) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
62 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. 62 of the 75 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 Columbia Riverkeeper ↗
- Who funds FUTUREWISE ↗
- Who funds RE SOURCES ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL LAW & POLICY ↗
- Who funds PUGET SOUNDKEEPER ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds OLYMPIC FOREST COALITION ↗
- Who funds Hanford Challenge Corporation ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES FOR A HEALTHY BAY ↗
- Who funds WESTERN ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds RESOURCE MEDIA ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE EARTH ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON CONSERVATION ACTION EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE SAN JUANS ↗
- Who funds SAVE OUR WILD SALMON ↗
- Who funds THE SURFRIDER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TOXIC-FREE FUTURE F/K/A WASHINGTON TOXICS COALITION ↗
- Who funds OKANOGAN HIGHLANDS ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds WILDEARTH GUARDIANS ↗
- Who funds TRANSPORTATION CHOICES COALITION ↗
- Who funds CASCADE FOREST CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds Snake River Waterkeeper Inc ↗
- Who funds WILD FISH CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN RIVERS INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST CENTER FOR ALTERNATIVES TO PESTICIDES ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds PUGET SOUND SAGE ↗
- Who funds Front and Centered ↗
- Who funds TWIN HARBORS WATERKEEPER ↗
- Who funds SPOKANE RIVERKEEPER ↗
- Who funds American Whitewater ↗
- Who funds OUR CHILDREN'S TRUST ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON WILD ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN EMPOWERED ↗
- Who funds ABORIGINAL OUTFITTERS ↗
- Who funds ONEAMERICA ↗
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: Patagoniaorg · Seattle Foundation · The Rose Foundation for Communities the Environment · The Bullitt Foundation · The Satterberg Foundation Inc · The Burning Foundation · Charlotte y Martin Foundation-Ima · The Russell Family Foundation · The Hugh and Jane Ferguson Foundation · Harder Foundation · Inatai Foundation · Grousemont 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 Northwest Fund for the Environment 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.
- Native Fish Society Inc — 27% of income from government
- American Whitewater — 5% of income from government
- Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides — 5% of income from government
- Columbia Riverkeeper — 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 Northwest Fund for the Environment?
Find your warmest path to The Northwest Fund for the Environment 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.