We applied network analysis to two years of IRS-990 filings from foundations funding organizations in the Great Salt Lake ecosystem.
This reveals how capital and governance actually flow — who concentrates it, where the bridges are, and why the system is structurally active but not aligned.
Every node and edge traces to a specific filing. Deterministic extraction, full audit trail.
Interactive graph. Scroll to zoom · drag any node to rearrange · drag the background to pan · hover or click a node to see the source evidence · click an insight below to focus on its subgraph.
Click any insight to focus the graph on the nodes it's about.
The top 5 funders control 97% of $162.7M. The Community Foundation of Utah ($60M), J Willard & Alice S Marriott Foundation ($47.8M), and Larry H & Gail Miller Family Foundation ($33.2M) alone account for the majority of capital in the system.
Why it matters: this isn't a criticism — it's a structural fact. A small number of decision points shape most of the ecosystem's conservation and community capital. That's a coordination opportunity if it's organized, and a fragility if it isn't.
Headline governance metrics show no board overlap between the funders. But detailed board data reveals one: Jeramy Lund serves as Treasurer of the Lund Foundation and sits on the board of The Community Foundation of Utah — the single largest funder in the system.
Why it matters: this is exactly what network analysis is for. Aggregated health scores flatten detail; the person-level tie is the kind of connective tissue that already exists and could be activated. One tie is not a coalition — but it is a starting point that health-score reporting misses entirely.
Only 2.3% of grantees receive from more than one funder. But the ones that do are revealing: University of Utah (4 funders, $6.3M), Utah State University (2 funders, $6.7M), This Is The Place Foundation (2 funders, $1.7M), and Neighborhood House (3 funders, $270K). These are the de facto coordination surfaces — grantees that multiple foundations already trust and fund.
Why it matters: if the goal is to build coordination across funders, these are the grantees where it's cheapest to start. The trust relationships already exist. The alignment doesn't.
This type of opportunity is not visible in aggregate funding reports — but becomes clear when the funding system is structured as a network.