Grantmakers › District of Columbia

The Wilderness Society

Washington, DC · EIN 53-0167933. Reported 351 grants totalling $11.6M to 205 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:

1. What kind of organization it is. For The Wilderness Society, the IRS classifies it under environment rather than as a grantmaker (NTEE C340) -- it is an operating charity that also makes grants.
2. How spread out its giving is. 205 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.
3. 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 $20,000. Half of what it reported fell between $10,000 and $30,000; the smallest was $5,100 and the largest $565,000. 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.

93 of 205 (45%) 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.

• North American Caribou Conference $10,000 · 2021
  SPONSORSHIP OF CONFERENCE
• The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Foundation $5,100 · 2023
  GAYLORD NELSON SCHOLARSHIP

What kind of organizations it funds

By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 165 of 205 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 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

22% of its giving went to organizations in District of Columbia. 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

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

1. 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.
2. Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $20,000 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
3. Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in District of Columbia.
4. 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.

Related guides

Where these numbers come from

Everything above is taken from The Wilderness Society'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 76 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 3 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: 1801 Pennsylvania Ave Nw 200, Washington, DC, 20006.

EIN 53-0167933 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this

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