Nevada · Nonprofit
FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS
FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS (Nevada) receives grants from 31 organizations whose IRS filings report $3,562,945 to it, the largest being WILBURFORCE FOUNDATION ($625,000). 23 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2024
- $1.9M
- Funders on record
- 31
- Grants received
- $3.6M
- Net assets
- $1.0M
What Friends of Nevada Wilderness does
Mission
Friends of Nevada Wilderness (fnw) works in partnership with volunteers and others to protect nevada's wilderness and wildlife. Fnw is dedicated to preserving all qualified nevada public lands as wilderness, protecting these wildlands from ongoing threats, educating the public about the values of and need for wilderness, and improving the management and restoration of wild lands.
As stated on its FY2024 Form 990.
Programs
Wilderness stewardship program: in partnership with the agencies, our volunteer stewards clean up, monitor and heal wildlands and improve wildlife habitat and recreational trail access. In 2024 we completed 33 volunteer stewardship projects with 353 volunteers, giving back a total of 291,125 of in-kind volunteer service. Volunteers monitored 112 springs, pulled invasive weeds, seeded native plants, collected whitebark pine seeds, removed fence, maintained trails, monitored dark skies, and installed signs. Our professional trail crews maintained about 67 miles of wilderness trails.
$996,442 spent68% of program spendingWilderness legislation and planning program: we continued support work on the truckee meadows and pershing and nye counties public lands bills. We analyzed and provided detailed comments public land proposals affecting nevada wildlands including the greenlink west transmission line and the massive esmeralda 7 industrial solar facilities proposed through our esmeralda/fish lake area of critical environmental concern proposal. We also provided comments on the west-wide solar peis, the sage grouse eis, and the white pine pumped storage proposals. We also created our first legal defense fund to better defend public lands
$248,265 spent17% of program spendingWilderness education and outreach program: we celebrated our 40th anniversary as a non-profit organization throughout the year we designed and printed two newsletters, produced the 2025 wild nevada calendar, sent monthly e-newsletters and numerous alerts and event invitations to our supporters. We hosted two alternative spring break programs for youth; a wild speaker series, the wild and scenic film festival, the black rock rendezvous and national public lands day events and a dark sky festival, along with outreach at burning man. We participated in numerous tabling events and volunteer fairs with patagonia and local colleges. Our save starry skies license plate became available for nevada drivers. Additional stories, videos, and photos can be viewed on our website, instagram, facebook and youtube.
$231,439 spent16% of program spending
The 3 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $1,476,146.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2021 to 2022, from $697k to $837k (+20%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2017 34% · 2018 40% · 2019 38% · 2020 32% · 2021 44% · 2022 42% · 2023 51% · 2024 47%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 2 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Board chair
Roger Scholl
Chair
As listed on its FY2024 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 6 funders to 16 funders, grant income rose $233k → $425k.
5 of 31 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 21% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 31 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 18% of grant income, and it takes 4 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 4 funders to its left
37% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 59% · 2018 40% · 2019 18% · 2020 24% · 2021 30% · 2022 23% · 2023 29% — diversifying over time.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
55% of FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 74% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS draws 92% of its grant income from funders outside Nevada, across 12 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $739k arriving through sponsors registered in 5 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Government funding FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $4.3M on record.
- Department of Agriculture$2.5M
- Department of the Interior$1.8M
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Nevada
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
79% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
89%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS?
- FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS (Nevada) receives grants from 31 organizations whose IRS filings report $3,562,945 to it, the largest being WILBURFORCE FOUNDATION ($625,000). 23 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS have?
- IRS filings report 31 organizations giving $3,562,945 in grants to FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS, 23 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS?
- WILBURFORCE FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $625,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like FRIENDS OF NEVADA WILDERNESS find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Nevada. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Friends of Nevada Wilderness →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2024 (financials across 2017–2024), and the filings of 31 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing