Tahoe Fund
Tahoe City, CA · EIN 01-0974628. Reported 86 grants totalling $3,752,794 to 50 organizations across tax years 2020-2023, 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. For Tahoe Fund, by its IRS classification it raises and distributes funds for environment (NTEE C12).
- How spread out its giving is. 50 distinct organizations, with 11% 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. 45% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 3 year-to-year transitions. That is below the 57% median for grantmaking charities, and well below the 67% private foundations manage. A list that turns over this much is one a newcomer can realistically join.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $25,000. Half of what it reported fell between $15,840 and $51,206; the smallest was $5,250 and the largest $309,700. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tahoe Area Mountain Bike Association | S Lake Tahoe, CA | $413,354 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| Tahoe Rim Trail Association | Stateline, NV | $345,687 | 5 | 4 | 2023 |
| Nevada State Parks | Carson City, NV | $320,090 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Clean Up the Cayes | Olympia, WA | $278,710 | 4 | 4 | 2023 |
| Lake Tahoe Community College Foundation | S Lake Tahoe, CA | $199,997 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Tahoe Regional Planning Agenc | Stateline, NV | $193,500 | 5 | 3 | 2023 |
| Achieve Tahoe | Truckee, CA | $151,206 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Tahoe Resource Consv Distr | So Lake Tahoe, CA | $122,000 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Friends of Ski Run | S Lake Tahoe, CA | $117,900 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| California Tahoe Conservancy | So Lake Tahoe, CA | $100,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition | Zephyr Cove, NV | $83,159 | 3 | 3 | 2022 |
| Adventure Risk Challenge | Truckee, CA | $80,000 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Sierra Nevada Alliance | S Lake Tahoe, CA | $76,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Gateway Mountain Center Inc | Truckee, CA | $75,000 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Sos Outreach | Avon, CO | $70,000 | 3 | 3 | 2022 |
| Fireaside | San Anselmo, CA | $64,500 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| National Forest Foundation | Missoula, MT | $63,299 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Tahoe Institute for Natural Science | Incline Vlg, NV | $57,935 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Burnbot Inc | S San Francisco, CA | $50,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Great Basin Institute | Reno, NV | $50,000 | 2 | 2 | 2022 |
| Incline Village-Crystal Bay Visitors and Convention Bureau | Incline Vlg, NV | $50,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Tahoe Backcountry Alliance | Truckee, CA | $50,000 | 3 | 3 | 2023 |
| Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation | Truckee, CA | $50,000 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Vp Data Commons | Conifer, CO | $50,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Tahoe Transportation District | Zephyr Cove, NV | $46,347 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| City of South Lake Tahoe | So Lake Tahoe, CA | $45,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Ca Dept of Parks & Recreation | Sacramento, CA | $43,622 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Washoe County Sheriffis Hasty Team Inc | Reno, NV | $42,500 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Stephen J Wampler Foundation Inc | Coronado, CA | $41,130 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| University of Nevada-Reno Foundation | Reno, NV | $38,875 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Restoring the Lake Depths Foundation Corp | Zephyr Cove, NV | $35,000 | 2 | 2 | 2023 |
| Ca Dept of Forestry & Fire Pr | Davis, CA | $30,960 | 1 | 1 | 2020 |
| Regents of the University of California | Oakland, CA | $26,105 | 1 | 1 | 2020 |
| Glenbrook Underground Inc | Carson City, NV | $25,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Usda Forest Service | Portland, OR | $25,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| US Forest Service | Portland, OR | $24,777 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| UC Davis | Davis, CA | $23,000 | 2 | 2 | 2021 |
| Earthviews Conservation Society | Tacoma, WA | $21,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Board of Regents Nevada System of Higher Education | Reno, NV | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Incline Village Crystal Bay Association | Incline Vlg, NV | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care Inc | S Lake Tahoe, CA | $20,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Incline Education Fund | Incline Vlg, NV | $19,850 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Ccc Foundation | Sacramento, CA | $19,389 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Truckee Meadows Parks Foundation | Reno, NV | $15,840 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Girls on the Run-Sierras | Reno, NV | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Lake Tahoe Waterman Association Inc | Carnelian Bay, CA | $14,032 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Nevada Nordic | Incline Vlg, NV | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Boys and Girls Club of Lake Tahoe | S Lake Tahoe, CA | $6,780 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Douglas County Search and Rescue | Minden, NV | $6,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue Team Inc Po Box 7703 | Tahoe City, CA | $5,250 | 1 | 1 | 2020 |
22 of 50 (44%) received money in more than one year over the 4 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.
- Lake Tahoe Com College Fndtn
conservation/ forest health - Tahoe Regional Planning Agenc
conservation/ stewardship - Washoe County Sheriff Office
recreation/rescue improvements - Lake Tahoe Bicycle Coalition
conservation/ transportation - UC Davis
stewardship&forest health
What kind of organizations it funds
By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 32 of 50 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 15 | $735,929 | $28,000 |
| 2021 | 26 | $948,083 | $25,000 |
| 2022 | 20 | $1,058,598 | $43,173 |
| 2023 | 25 | $1,010,184 | $25,000 |
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
49% of its giving went to organizations in California. 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 the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.
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 $25,000 -- 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 California.
- 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.
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Where these numbers come from
Everything above is taken from Tahoe Fund's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2020-2023). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.
On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 23 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 2 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: Po Box 7124, Tahoe City, CA, 96145.
EIN 01-0974628 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this
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