· Private foundation
Barry L and Paula M Downing Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k8 grants · $36k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $52k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $294k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WICHITA ART MUSEUM | $200,000 |
| BPS FOUNDATION | $94,000 |
| TELLURIDE FILM ASSOCIATION | $17,450 |
| WICHITA PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| THE FIRST TEE OF GREATER WICHITA | $10,000 |
| ORPHEUM THEATRE | $10,000 |
| CEREBRAL PALSY RESERACH FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| HEROES ACADEMY | $5,000 |
| ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCATION | $5,000 |
| WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| THE LORDS DINER | $5,000 |
| FUNDAMENTAL LEARNING CENTER | $5,000 |
| THE GRUMPY OLD MEN | $3,000 |
| HOPE COMMUNITY CHURCH | $500 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY20–24, $140k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +24% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
20 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $142k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- WAWichita Art Museum Inc5× · 2020–2024 · $977k · revenue +69%
- SISTARKEY INC2× · 2022–2023 · $75k · revenue +30%
- KAKANSAS ACTION FOR CHILDREN INC3× · 2021–2023 · $34k · revenue +24%
Funded once
- PPPLAYERS PHILANTHROPHIC FUNDone grant, 2023 · $74k
- SSSTUDENT STARTUP INCone grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +11%
- CPCEREBRAL PALSY RESEARCH FOUNDATION OF KSone grant, 2020 · $15k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
We exist to inspire all students to be the best versions of themselves through a transformative education grounded in academic excellence within our inclusive community.
The wichita swim club is dedicated to competitive swimming, serving swimmers from all over the wichita and south central kansas area
Wplf seeks private charitable support to create young readers, ensure digital inclusion, and provide equitable access to information. wplf's sole purpose is to create a margin of excellence at wichita public library.
To drive economic growth and community advancement in the wichita region.
To engage in grant making to medical educational organizations and related charitable activities in the area of eye disease and vision disorder, and the care and treatment thereof.
First tee is a youth development organization that enables kids to build strength of character that empowers them through a lifetime of new challenges. we create active learning experiences that build inner strength, self-confidence, and…
We seek to provide a superior educational experience for children ages 3 to 11, utilizing the montessori methods of teaching and learning. we address the intellectual, emotional, physical and social growth of each child.
Foster and support amateur sports competition
Engage community partners (including local governments, nonprofit organizations, and public institutions) to develop a community vision to address education, quality of life, infrastructure, workforce, and economic development and…
Wichita's littlest heroes (wlh) exists to provide hope, help, and happiness to families of children ages 0-18 in the kansas area who are battling life-threatening medical conditions. wlh strives to accomplish this be being a physical and…
The organization promotes the personal development of boys and girls ages 5-18, with special concern for the disadvantaged by providing services that build self-esteem, values and skills during critical periods of growth.
Enriching western Kansas life through philanthropy, collaboration and leadership.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kansas Action for Children Inc and the most unlike its peers is Timothy P O'shaughnessy Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 28 years old; the field is 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 9% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
24 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 24 of the 48 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds Wichita Art Museum Inc ↗
- Who funds BPS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STARKEY INC ↗
- Who funds KANSAS ACTION FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds PHILLIPS FUNDAMENTAL LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds STUDENT STARTUP INC ↗
- Who funds Grumpy Old Men Inc ↗
- Who funds WICHITA PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TALLGRASS FILM ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PUPPIES BEHIND BARS INC ↗
- Who funds Council for a Strong America ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF SOUTH CENTRAL KANSAS INC ↗
- Who funds KANSAS BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS INC ↗
- Who funds WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HEROES ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD START INC ↗
- Who funds WICHITA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STORYTIME VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS ON THE RUN OF SEDGWICK COUNTY ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Berry Foundation Inc · Kansas Health Foundation · Ima Foundation · Lattner Family Foundation Inc · Textron Charitable Trust Dtd 122353 · Annie Foundation · Dwane L and Velma Lunt Wallace Charitable Foundation · Bruce G Cochener Foundation · United Way of the Plains Inc · Servant Foundation · DeVore Foundation Inc · The Fidelity Bank Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Barry L and Paula M Downing Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
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Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.