· Public charity
The Sand County Foundation Inc
Sand county foundation's mission is to inspire and empower a growing number of land owners and managers to ethically care for the land to sustain water resources, build healthy soil, enhance wildlife habitat, and support outdoor recreation.
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.
The 13 grants below total $5,781,546 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $6,058,675 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $277,129 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $96k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $63k
- $250k+1 grant · $5.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY INNOVATION CENTER | $5,608,876 |
| REGENTS OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA | $63,258 |
| NATIONAL AUDUBON SOCIETY | $14,746 |
| STEMPER HAY & GRAIN | $10,980 |
| SCHWAB CHARITABLE FUND | $10,000 |
| MM TERRY RANCH LTD | $10,000 |
| REGNERATIVE FARMER INC | $10,000 |
| HUTCHISON BROTHERS | $10,000 |
| BOWLES FARMING COMPANY INC | $10,000 |
| SUNNYSIDE FARMS INC | $10,000 |
| MUNNS FLYING M RANCH | $10,000 |
| VERNON COUNTY LAND & WATER CONSERVATION DEPARTMENT | $7,623 |
| GLACIERLAND RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT | $6,063 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 97% of your 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 +477% since the first grant, against +43% for the ones you funded once.
3 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 2 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $163k 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
- EPEnvironmental Policy Innovation Center2× · 2023–2024 · $6.5M · revenue +477% · 66% of their budget
- UOUniversity of Wisconsin Madison2× · 2022–2023 · $72k
- RFRAFTELIS FINANCIAL CONSULTANTS INC2× · 2021–2022 · $16k
Funded once
ALLIANCE FOR THE GREAT LAKESgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $230k · revenue +74%
RIVER NETWORKone grant, 2022 · $150k · revenue -17%- PPOLICYLINKone grant, 2022 · $110k · revenue +5%
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.
Conservation easement holder and long-term steward of wetland, stream, and species mitigation banks.
To empower frontline communities to lead nature-based solutions that advance climate justice, ecosystem restoration, and resilient livelihoods through connecting locally-led initiatives to funding, markets, and technical support.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
To research and develop healthy climate solutions comprising global food security, ecosystem regeneration and carbon balance in seas and soils.
WEF's mission is inspiring the water community in pursuit of human and environmental well-being. WEF is a global environmental leader committed to water quality education and technical best practices. WEF connects water professionals;…
To advance water security by understanding, evaluating and innovating in water law and governance.
Water Climate Trust works to restore aquatic ecosystems with people who depend on them for food, jobs, health, recreation, and cultural survival. To this end, we advance water allocation policies that protect instream flows for ecosystem,…
The Breakthrough Institute is a research center that identifies and promotes technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges.
Sustainable Conservation advances the collaborative stewardship of Californias land, air, and water for the benefit of nature and people. For over three decades, Sustainable Conservation has built coalitions of people with different…
International Rivers protects rivers and defends the rights of communities that depend on them.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Alliance for the Great Lakes and the most unlike its peers is The Dixon Water Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
15 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. 15 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.
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 Fish and Wildlife Foundation · The Kresge Foundation · The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Sand County Foundation Inc 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.
- Moonshot Missions Inc — 16% of income from government
- Environmental Policy Innovation Center — 13% of income from government
- New Jersey Future Inc — 7% 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.