Montana Legal Services Association
Helena, MT · EIN 81-0298262. Reported 59 grants totalling $3,793,361 to 20 organizations across tax years 2023-2025, on Form 990 Schedule I.
Does this grantmaker accept applications?
Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.
Three things in the filing do bear on it:
- What kind of organization it is. The IRS has no activity classification on file for this one, so we cannot tell you whether it is a community foundation or a single-institution support fund. The recipient list below is the better guide.
- How spread out its giving is. 20 distinct organizations, with 16% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is genuinely spread out -- the mark of a funder making many independent decisions rather than underwriting one institution.
- How much its list changes. 100% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 2 year-to-year transitions. That is well above the 56% median for grantmaking charities, and above the 67% median for private foundations. It describes the organizations it already funds, not whether it would consider a new one.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $53,519. Half of what it reported fell between $31,595 and $81,656; the smallest was $5,755 and the largest $356,425. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.
Every organization it funded
This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.
| Organization | Location | Total received | Grants | Years funded | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| National American Indian Court Judges Association | Boulder, CO | $621,197 | 2 | 2 | 2025 |
| Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid Inc | Mercedes, TX | $290,897 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Legal Aid of Nebraska | Omaha, NE | $261,810 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Oklahoma Indian Legal Services Inc | Oklahoma City, OK | $236,118 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Dakota Plains Legal Services Inc | Mission, SD | $212,820 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Dna-Peoples Legal Services Inc | Window Rock, AZ | $208,883 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| New Mexico Legal Aid | Albuguergue, NM | $200,646 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Idaho Legal Aid Services Inc Idaho Legal Aid Services Inc | Boise, ID | $198,500 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Nevada Legal Services Inc | Las Vegas, NV | $186,816 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Alaska Legal Services Corporation | Anchorage, AK | $170,285 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Utah Legal Services Inc | Salt Lake Cty, UT | $165,002 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| California Indian Legal Services Inc | Sacramento, CA | $163,334 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Anishinabe Legal Service Inc | Cass Lake, MN | $157,326 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Michigan Indian Legal Services Inc | Traverse City, MI | $157,051 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Wisconsin Judicare Incorporated | Wausau, WI | $151,199 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Legal Aid Services of Oregon | Portland, OR | $107,566 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Northwest Justice Project | Seattle, WA | $93,862 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Legal Services of North Dakota | Bismarck, ND | $76,444 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Colorado Legal Services | Denver, CO | $71,424 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
| Legal Aid of Wyoming Inc | Cheyenne, WY | $62,181 | 3 | 3 | 2025 |
20 of 20 (100%) received money in more than one year over the 3 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.
What the money was for
Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.
- Naicja
PROVIDE TTA THAT WILL ADDRESS THE UNIQUE INTERESTS OF TRIBAL SOVEREIGNS AS DEFINED BY THE COMMUNITY THE JUSTICE SYSTEM SERVES - Dakota Plains Legal Services
PROVIDE LEGAL REPRESENTATION IN TRIBAL COURTS
What kind of organizations it funds
By the activity category the IRS assigns each recipient, for the 15 of 20 recipients we could match to a registered organization. The categories are the IRS's, not ours -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.
Giving by year
| Tax year | Grants reported | Total | Median grant |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 19 | $943,713 | $41,205 |
| 2024 | 20 | $1,280,179 | $48,856 |
| 2025 | 20 | $1,569,469 | $62,461 |
Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.
Where its money goes
18% of its giving went to organizations in Colorado. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.
Down to the city
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Funders that support the same organizations
These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are a sign of overlapping priorities and nothing more: they do not show that any of these funders would consider a new organization. Each page says what its filings show.
How to approach this grantmaker
- Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
- Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $53,519 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
- Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Colorado.
- Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.
Where these numbers come from
Everything above is taken from Montana Legal Services Association's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 5 returns (tax years 2021-2025). Grant figures are from its returns. Recipient classifications, the concentration and retention figures and the funders that support the same organizations are our own calculations from them, described in how we build this.
On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 20 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 0 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.
Address of record on the latest return: 616 Helena Ave Ste 100, Helena, MT, 59601.
EIN 81-0298262 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this
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