· Public charity
The Outdoor Foundation
The foundation is organized exclusively for charitable and educational purposes related to outdoor recreation activites and education, including the preservation of the natural environment, addressing issues of the outdoor industry and promoting participation.
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
- $10k–50k8 grants · $192k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $465k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WILDERNESS INQUIRY | $115,400 |
| DETROIT PARKS COALITION | $100,000 |
| SEATTLE PARKS FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $100,000 |
| CHESAPEAKE BAY TRUST | $50,000 |
| MAINE AUDUBON | $25,000 |
| RIVER CITY OUTDOORS | $25,000 |
| RIVERSPORT FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| WEST ATLANTA WATERSHED ALLIANCE INC | $25,000 |
| CITY OF GRAND RAPIDS | $25,000 |
| THE SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION | $25,000 |
| CHILDREN AND NATURE NETWORK | $16,812 |
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 (FY17–24, $426k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, 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.
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.
26 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2024, 17 since wound down; 2 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $117k 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
- NPNATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION2× · 2017–2018 · $724k · revenue +244%
- NWNATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION4× · 2021–2024 · $329k · revenue +37%
- SPSEATTLE PARKS FOUNDATION3× · 2022–2024 · $302k · revenue +49%
Funded once
YMCA of Metropolitan Detroitone grant, 2022 · $101k · revenue +16%- SCSIERRA CLUB FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $28k · revenue -55%
- ROREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEYone grant, 2020 · $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.
The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust leads and inspires action to conserve and enhance the landscape of the Mountains to Sound Greenway, ensuring a long-term balance between people and nature.
The Wildlands Conservancy's dual mission is to preserve the beauty and biodiversity of the earth and to provide programs so that children may know the wonder and joy of nature.
To connect young people to the wonder and science of the natural world, igniting self-discovery and inspiring stewardship of our planet.
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
Washington trails association is on a mission to connect everyone to the outdoors and build a community that gives back to trails and public lands.
The mission of the Whatcom Land Trust is to preserve and protect wildlife habitat, scenic, agricultural and open space lands in Whatcom County for future generations by securing interests in land and promoting land stewardship.
To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.
The adirondack council ensures the ecological integrity (clean water and air, wildlife habitat, etc.), wild character (solitude, scenic beauty, etc.), and vibrant communities of new york's six-million-acre adirondack park. the adirondack…
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.
Greater yellowstone coalition works with all people to protect the lands, waters, and wildlife of the greater yellowstone ecosystem, now and for future generations.
Founded in 1981, the wetlands conservancy is dedicated to working in partnership with communities statewide to permanently protect, conserve and restore oregon's greatest wetlands.
Western rivers conservancy's mission is to protect outstanding river ecosystems in the western united states. continued on schedule o.we acquire land to conserve critical habitat, provide public access for compatible use and enjoyment, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wildlands Trust Inc and the most unlike its peers is River City Foundation. 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 28 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% 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.
102 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. 102 of the 114 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 NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RIVERSPORT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE SAN DIEGO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds RIVER CITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SEATTLE PARKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds CHESAPEAKE BAY TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds WILDERNESS INQUIRY INC ↗
- Who funds THORNE ECOLOGICAL INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Maine Audubon Society ↗
- Who funds West Atlanta Watershed Alliance ↗
- Who funds QUIMBY FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit ↗
- Who funds DETROIT PARKS COALITION ↗
- Who funds YADKIN RIVER GREENWAY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds TIMUCUAN PARKS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Appalachian Mountain Club ↗
- Who funds ICE AGE TRAIL ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION LEGACY ↗
- Who funds OUTDOOR OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds Friends of Saguaro National Park ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI PARK CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK FOUNDLING ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE APOSTLE ISLANDS NATIONAL LAKESHORE INC ↗
- Who funds The Youth Connection Inc ↗
- Who funds Education Without Walls ↗
- Who funds Friends of Katahdin Woods & Waters ↗
- Who funds GOLDEN HILLS RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds FORD'S THEATRE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds OTIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE REDWOODS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds THE STUDENT CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Groundwork Richmond Inc ↗
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: National Park Foundation · National Recreation Foundation Incorporated · Patagoniaorg · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · Rei Cooperative Action Fund · The Nature Conservancy · National Environmental Education and Training Foundation Inc · Clif Family Foundation · National Park Trust Inc · Justice Outside · National Forest Foundation · Xcel Energy 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 Outdoor 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.
- Chesapeake Bay Trust — 100% of income from government
- Siuslaw Watershed Council Inc — 100% of income from government
- Raritan Headwaters Association — 94% of income from government
- Rock Creek Conservancy Inc — 60% of income from government
- Isles Inc — 21% of income from government
- Shorerivers Inc — 13% of income from government
- Wildlands Trust Inc — 5% of income from government
- Appalachian Mountain Club — 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.