· Private foundation
Zeller-Knowles Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k52 grants · $98k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $200k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CENTRAL CHRISTIAN CHURCH | $27,000 |
| CASCADE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| HI-INE FUTURE FOUNDATION INC | $20,000 |
| GREAT FALLS MUNICIPAL BAND | $20,000 |
| FAMILY PROMISE OF GREAT FALLS | $20,000 |
| SUN RIVER VALLEY LIONS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| MONTANA SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF AND BLIND FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| GREAT FALLS-CASCADE COUNTY SENIOR CITIZENS CENTER | $15,000 |
| ST ANN CHURCH | $12,500 |
| FRIENDS OF THE LITTLE BELTS | $10,000 |
| SUN RIVER VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| UPTOWN OPTIMIST FOUNDATION INC | $10,000 |
| GREAT FALLS CLINIC LEGACY FOUNDATION | $9,000 |
| SIMMS HIGH SCHOOL | $9,000 |
| HOUSED GREAT FALLS | $9,000 |
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 (FY22–25, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Zeller-Knowles Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +12% since the first grant, against -8% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 22 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $75k 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
- CCCASCADE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY5× · 2021–2025 · $100k · revenue +386%
- FPFAMILY PROMISE OF GREAT FALLS4× · 2022–2025 · $61k · revenue +34%
- GFGREAT FALLS SCOTTISH RITE CHILDHOOD LANGUAGE DISORDERS CLINIC3× · 2022–2025 · $20k · revenue +188%
Funded once
- SMSNOWY MOUNTAIN DEVELOPMENT CORPgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $17k · revenue +185%
- SSSawtooth Stables Youth Equestrian Centerone grant, 2021 · $10k · 62% of their budget
- SJST JOHNS LUTHERAN CHURCHone grant, 2023 · $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.
The montana preservation alliance (mpa) saves and protects montana's historic places, traditional landscapes, and cultural heritage. we are the only statewide, not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing montanans with the resources…
The montana state parks foundation raises private support to enhance the visitors experience and build advocates for montanas state parks and recreation heritage.
To promote public policy solutions that provide increased access to economic opportunities, greater individual freedoms and encourage greater participation in public matters by providing research and recommendation on public policy
To build and maintain trails in the Missouri River Headwaters Area.
Funding and conducting research on issues associated with the ongoing development, infrastructure, historical preservation, and planning of Missoula Midtown and operating educational programs to educate the public about these issues.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Montana History Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Lewistown Art Center. 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 30 years old; the field is 23. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 78 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 CASCADE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE OF GREAT FALLS ↗
- Who funds GREAT FALLS CLINIC LEGACY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MONTANA SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF AND BLIND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SPARK CHILDREN'S MUSEUM OF MONTANA INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT FALLS SCOTTISH RITE CHILDHOOD LANGUAGE DISORDERS CLINIC ↗
- Who funds LAUREL MONTANA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds SNOWY MOUNTAIN DEVELOPMENT CORP ↗
- Who funds GREAT FALLS-CASCADE COUNTY SENIOR CITIZENS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Sawtooth Stables Youth Equestrian Center ↗
- Who funds Pet Paw-See Inc ↗
- Who funds GREAT FALLS COMMUNITY CONCERT ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds EXTREME HISTORY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF MONTANA SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARKS ↗
- Who funds Missouri River Open Lands Preservation Inc ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CASCADE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SAMS HOPE FOUNDATION ↗
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: Town Pump Charitable Foundation · Montana Community Foundation Inc · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Dennis & Phyllis Washington Foundation · Alice Lee Lund Charitable Trust · Sample Foundation Inc · Herb Waltermire Comm Enhancement Fndt Inc · Oakland Family Foundation · Davidson Family Foundation · United Way of Cascade County · Browning Kimball Foundation · Humanities Montana
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 Zeller-Knowles 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 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.