· Public charity
United Way of Cowlitz County
To provide resources for human services programs in cowlitz and wahkiakum counties in washington.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 11 grants below total $190,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $272,133 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $82,133 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $111k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $65k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ESD 112 | $65,000 |
| FISH OF COWLITZ COUNTY | $16,000 |
| EMERGENCY SUPPORT SHELTER | $15,000 |
| COWLITZ-WAHKIAKUM LEGAL AID | $15,000 |
| HELLO LIFE EATING DISORDER RECOVERY SERVICES | $15,000 |
| ST JAMES FAMILY CENTER | $15,000 |
| COMMUNITY CARING PROJECT PARENT'S PLACE | $12,500 |
| FAMILY PROMISE | $12,000 |
| ETHNIC SUPPORT COUNCIL | $10,000 |
| COWLITZ CHILD ADVOCATES | $8,500 |
| LOWER COLUMBIA SCHOOL GARDENS | $6,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $195k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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.
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 +92% since the first grant, against -20% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 3 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $90k 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
- SJST JAMES FAMILY CENTER9× · 2017–2025 · $184k · revenue +48%
- ESEMERGENCY SUPPORT SHELTER7× · 2017–2025 · $156k · revenue +70%
- CJCHILDREN'S JUSTICE& ADVOCACY CENTER6× · 2017–2022 · $111k · revenue +62%
Funded once
- CCCOWLITZ COMMUNITY NETWORKone grant, 2024 · $50k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $10k
- ESETHNIC SUPPORT COUNCILone grant, 2024 · $10k
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.
To help families with children in our community who are situationally homeless achieve sustainable independence through a community based response by providing temporary housing, usually 60-90 days, along with case management.
Community center services
To promote each child's development by providing high quality early childhood education.
CARE. Commitment to improving quality of life. Advocacy for mental health and overall well-being. Response to community needs. Effective treatment with measurable outcomes.
To protect children, support families, and bring hope and healing through compassionate, coordinated, and child-centered advocacy, through specialized programs and services, such as multi-disciplinary team coordination, forensic…
The center for community services empowers families to break the cycle of poverty through crisis assistance and employment readiness.
Head start & other children services
Chelan Valley Hope is a gross-roots local social services agency 'hub' for compassionate connections and resources since 2009. We empower people to improve their own lives by giving them a hand up; not just a hand-out. We do this by…
To combat child sexual and physical abuse by providing services to children and families in a safe enviroment.
To advance the empowerment, inclusion, and wellness of all persons with disabilities through advocacy, community education, peer mentoring, and skill development so that they may realize independence and full participation in all areas of…
Housing Counseling Services
The primary goal of Willits Community Services is to provide temporary assistance services to families and individuals in crisis. WCS also provides referrals to other community or regional resources and gives assistance to clients in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Catholic Community Services of Western Washington and the most unlike its peers is Ethnic Support Council. 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 39 years old; the field is 23. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% 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 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.
23 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. 23 of the 31 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 ST JAMES FAMILY CENTER ↗
- Who funds EMERGENCY SUPPORT SHELTER ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S JUSTICE& ADVOCACY CENTER ↗
- Who funds FISH of Cowlitz County ↗
- Who funds COWLITZ COUNTY CHILD ADVOCATES ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HOUSE ON BROADWAY ↗
- Who funds PROGRESS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds COWLITZ-WAHKIAKUM COUNTY LEGAL AID PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds LOWER COLUMBIA SCHOOL GARDENS ↗
- Who funds ETHNIC SUPPORT COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds LIFE WORKS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY CARING PROJECT ↗
- Who funds THE YMCA OF SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds Youth and Family Link ↗
- Who funds CHILDRENS DISCOVERY MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds Community Health Partners ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF COWLITZ COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC COMMUNITY SERVICES OF WESTERN WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds Oxford House Inc ↗
- Who funds HELLO LIFE EATING DISORDER RECOVERY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF LONGVIEW SENIOR CENTER ↗
- Who funds CASCADE PACIFIC COUNCIL BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds WOODLAND ACTION CENTER ↗
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: The Health Care Foundation · Nippon Dynawave Foundation · PeaceHealth · Kaiser Foundation Hospitals · The Wollenberg Foundation · The Honorable Frank L & Arlene G Price Foundation · The Kirchner Foundation · John M McClelland Sr Charitable Foundation · The Firstenburg Foundation · Bluescope Foundation North America · Evans-Kelly Family Foundation · Evans Venture 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 United Way of Cowlitz County 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.
- Oxford House Inc — 8% 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.