· Public charity
United Way of Northern Nevada and the Sierra
UNITED WAY OF NORTHERN NEVADA AND THE SIERRA's mission is to unite communities to improve lives.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 63% of UNITED WAY OF NORTHERN NEVADA AND THE SIERRA’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 17 grants below total $2,149,443 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,425,269 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $1,275,826 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
- $10k–50k2 grants · $33k
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.8M
- $250k+1 grant · $351k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| A PLUS LEARNING CENTER | $351,325 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA | $248,439 |
| UNDER THE MAGIC PINE TREE | $210,000 |
| WELLS FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER | $164,378 |
| HIGH DESERT MONTESSORI SCHOOL | $150,000 |
| ABC HALO DAYCARE CENTER STEAD | $150,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF MASON VALLEY | $135,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF NORTHERN | $125,573 |
| BIGGEST LITTLE LEARNING CENTER | $117,612 |
| ALPHABET ACADEMY | $104,822 |
| ABC HALO DAYCARE CENTER SUN VALLEY | $97,500 |
| FROM CRADLES TO CRAYONS | $82,500 |
| SUNSHINE & RAINBOWS INC | $65,573 |
| LITTLE BEAR PRESCHOOL | $60,000 |
| SMALL WONDERS | $53,752 |
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 (FY17–25, $651k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 47% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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 +68% since the first grant, against +20% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 5 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $385k 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
- WFWELLS FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER5× · 2017–2025 · $343k · revenue +92% · 35% of their budget
- HDHIGH DESERT MONTESSORI CHARTER SCHOOL2× · 2024–2025 · $264k · revenue +1%
- SNSIERRA NEVADA JOURNEYS3× · 2017–2019 · $252k · revenue +55%
Funded once
- ASA STEP AHEADone grant, 2024 · $138k
- ZAZOO'N AROUNDone grant, 2024 · $123k
- NNNorthern Nevada Literacy Councilgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $88k · revenue +123%
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 Nevada Children's Services enhances the community by supporting quality childcare and empowering families to aspire to life-long success.
CSNV is engaged in comprehensive community development projects that promote neighborhood revitalization and economic development, community education and civic action, housing, development; cultural awareness, equity and
Child abuse awareness and prevention
The mission of the Club is to inspire and enable all youth, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens. Boys & Girls Club of North Lake Tahoe has been a cornerstone of the…
To enable all young people, especially those who need us most to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
To distribute food to the needy of Nevada County.
To provide substance abuse prevention & treatment.
To create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth.
Community chest's mission is to act as a catalyst for change and a center for resources to help people help themselves and others as we build strong and healthy families and communities.
To provide high quality outpatient care for low and no income community members suffering from emotional disturbances, family disruption, communication disorders, anger management issues, psychiatric problems, substance abuse and acute and…
Child Advocates of Nevada County provides advocacy, education and prevention services to Nevada County's children to ensure they grow up free from abuse and neglect.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Children's Cabinet Inc and the most unlike its peers is Saint James Antiochian Orthodox Church. 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 36 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 42 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 WELLS FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds HIGH DESERT MONTESSORI CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SIERRA NEVADA JOURNEYS ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF MASON VALLEY ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities of Northern Nevada ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF TRUCKEE MEADOWS ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S CABINET FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHANNEL 5 PUBLIC BROADCASTING INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S CABINET INC ↗
- Who funds Northern Nevada Literacy Council ↗
- Who funds Food Bank of Northern Nevada Inc ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds PROJECT MANA ↗
- Who funds TAHOE FAMILY SOLUTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds CRISIS INTERVENTION SERVICES DBA SIERRA COMMUNITY HOUSE ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY COMMUNITIES OF LYON AND STOREY COUNTIES ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SERVICES AGENCY ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN NEVADA DREAM CENTER ↗
- Who funds BLACK WALL STREET OF RENO NV ↗
- Who funds RIDGE HOUSE 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: Community Foundation of Northern Nevada · John Ben Snow Memorial Tr Uw #839158 · NV Energy Charitable Foundation · The Nell J Redfield Foundation · Robert Z Hawkins Foundation · Helen Close Charitable Foundation · The E L Cord Foundation · Tahoe Community Foundation · Deborah and Tj Day Foundation · Roxie and Azad Joseph Foundation · Estelle J Kelsey Foundation · Greater Nevada Credit Union
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 Northern Nevada and the Sierra 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.