· Community foundation
Whatcom Community Foundation
To cultivate neighborliness.
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 106 grants below total $5,917,846 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $7,409,494 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $1,491,648 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 $10k33 grants · $240k
- $10k–50k57 grants · $1.2M
- $50k–250k10 grants · $1.1M
- $250k+6 grants · $3.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MERIDIAN SCHOOL DISTRICT #505 | $1,010,000 |
| BELLINGHAM TECHNICAL COLLEGE | $600,000 |
| ALTERNATIVES TO HUNGER DBA BELLINGHAM FOOD BANK | $543,899 |
| SUSTAINABLE CONNECTIONS | $510,150 |
| NOOKSACK SALMON ENHANCEMENT ASSOCIATION | $337,693 |
| RE SOURCES | $303,392 |
| WHATCOM COUNCIL ON AGING | $216,793 |
| CHUCKANUT HEALTH FOUNDATION | $162,931 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD GREATER WASHINGTON AND NORTH IDAHO | $145,309 |
| BELLINGHAM TECHNICAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $121,000 |
| CITY OF LYNDEN | $120,000 |
| WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $117,164 |
| VAMOS OUTDOORS PROJECT | $68,000 |
| OPPORTUNITY COUNCIL | $64,300 |
| WHATCOM COUNTY SEARCH & RESCUE COUNCIL | $59,960 |
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, $4.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 98% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +54% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
147 repeat relationships — 77 still active in FY2025, 70 since wound down; 28 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, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.5M 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
- SCSUSTAINABLE CONNECTIONS9× · 2017–2025 · $6.0M · revenue +157% · 44% of their budget
- ATAlternatives to Hunger Bellingham Food Bank8× · 2017–2025 · $2.8M · revenue +99%
- NSNOOKSACK SALMON ENHANCEMENT ASSOCIATION9× · 2017–2025 · $2.0M · revenue +124% · 41% of their budget
Funded once
- NCNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT INCone grant, 2021 · $988k · revenue -19%
- FRFIRST REFORMED CHURCHone grant, 2022 · $850k
- NVNOOKSACK VALLEY ASSEMBLY OF GODone grant, 2022 · $160k
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.
Futurewise works throughout Washington state to encourage healthy, equitable and opportunity-rich communities, and to protect our most valuable farmlands, forests and water resources through wise land use policies and practices.
Advocate for tax policy in Washington State
United way of snohomish county improves lives for families in snohomish county by bringing people, resources, and strategy together.
Washington Indian Civil Rights Commission is led by and for Indigenous people, and envisions a just society in which we are treated with honor, fairness and respect. Our mission is to uphold our individual civil rights through education…
Washingtonians for Public banking promotes education and civic engagement on public banking and banking reform within Washington state. The organization organizes, educates, and advocates for the establishment of public banking, and…
Protecting our shrub-steppe and connecting people to this vanishing landscape.
Creating a greener, healthier, more equitable, and better Washington for all through community outreach, network building, and advocacy for conservation and outdoor recreation funding.
To build and enhance the competitiveness of Washington State's film and associated creative industry. We accomplish this by marketing and managing the state's production incentive program, representing the state in national and…
The Center for Environmental Law & Policy is a statewide organization whose mission is to protect, preserve and restore Washington's waters through education, advocacy, policy reform, and public interest litigation.
We are workers, united across different industries to improve our working conditions and our lives. We come together as working people to build power through education, organizing, and enforcement. We work to raise and uphold standards in…
To increase the economic well-being and quality of life for all citizens of the region; to coordinate provincial, territorial, and state policies throughout the region; to identify and promote "models of success and to serve as a conduit…
Discover Your Northwest promotes the discovery of northwest public lands, enriches the experience of visitors and builds community stewardship of these special places today and for generations to come.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Yakima Valley Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Pedal Project. 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 25 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 5% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
241 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. 241 of the 303 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 SUSTAINABLE CONNECTIONS ↗
- Who funds Alternatives to Hunger Bellingham Food Bank ↗
- Who funds NOOKSACK SALMON ENHANCEMENT ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds RE SOURCES ↗
- Who funds WHATCOM COUNCIL ON AGING ↗
- Who funds MERCY HOUSING NORTHWEST ↗
- Who funds WHATCOM LONG TERM RECOVERY GROUP ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST AGRICULTURE BUSINESS CENTER ↗
- Who funds MOUNT BAKER THEATRE ↗
- Who funds CLOUD MOUNTAIN FARM CENTER ↗
- Who funds Bellingham Bay Community Boating Center ↗
- Who funds WHATCOM LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY AND ALUMNI ↗
- Who funds MT BAKER PLANNED PARENTHOOD ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST YOUTH SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Earth Island Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds THE BELLINGHAM PUBLIC SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Bellingham Technical College Foundation ↗
- Who funds COMMON THREADS FARM ↗
- Who funds LHAQ'TEMISH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds North Cascades Institute ↗
- Who funds CHUCKANUT HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WHATCOM MUSEUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PACIFIC SHELLFISH INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR WASHINGTONS FUTURE ↗
- Who funds ALLIED ARTS OF WHATCOM COUNTY ↗
- Who funds WHATCOM FAMILY & COMMUNITY NETWORK ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC COMMUNITY SERVICES OF WESTERN WASHINGTON ↗
- Who funds MAUI YOUTH AND FAMILY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds LYDIA PLACE ↗
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: Chuckanut Health Foundation · North Sound Accountable Community of Health · Puget Sound Energy Foundation · The Norcliffe Foundation · Mount Baker Foundation · First Fed Foundation · PeaceHealth · United Way of Whatcom County · Mary H Storer Foundation · Riverstyx Foundation · Eleanor and Henry Jansen Foundation · Jerry H Walton 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 Whatcom Community 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.
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 0% 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.