· Private foundation
Big Joy Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k9 grants · $225k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $397k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DENVER FILM SOCIETY | $100,000 |
| SERVENOW | $90,725 |
| SERVLIFE INTERNATIONAL INC | $56,450 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| NDOTO | $50,000 |
| NDOTO | $50,000 |
| INTERNATIONAL DEAF EDUCATION ASSOCIATION | $42,000 |
| BIG D VISION ORPHANS | $39,000 |
| SERVENOW | $32,276 |
| MOSAIC INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES | $29,500 |
| STEP INTERNATIONAL INC | $25,000 |
| SERVENOW | $19,500 |
| KIDZ AT HEART INTERNATIONAL | $15,500 |
| KIMS OPEN DOOR INC | $12,500 |
| EDIFY | $10,000 |
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 (FY22–25, $264k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 13% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 16% of Big Joy Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 46% of the giving stays in CO; read by stated purpose it is 25% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
6 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 38% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $383k 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
- SISERVLIFE INTERNATIONAL INC3× · 2023–2025 · $229k · revenue +10%
- SSERVENOW2× · 2022–2025 · $229k · revenue +150%
- KAKIDZ AT HEART INTERNATIONAL2× · 2023–2025 · $34k · revenue +10%
Funded once
- WVWORLD VISION - NORTHERN ZAMBIA WASHone grant, 2023 · $100k
- WRWORLD RELIEFone grant, 2024 · $66k
- IIDEAone grant, 2024 · $49k
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.
International needs has the vision to transform lives and change communities by helping christian nationals serve both god and neighbor within their own countries.
Heart Bridge International exists to equip and empower Christians around the world to fulfill the Great Commission. The organization provides free ministry training, discipleship resources, and practical coaching to under-resourced…
Train ministers, lay people and students who are involved at any level of ministry in small or large churches at local, national, and international levels. We train to go into the world and spread the gospel by helping people meet their…
To propagate the gospel of jesus christ; to examine candidates and appoint missionaries. to endorse missionary programs according to standards set forth in the new testament, to establish churches, church schools & mission societies in…
Zoe Empowers is a global network of local organizations throughout Africa and India providing a replicable and scalable framework whereby youth led or resourced families are provided the training, resources, and community support to become…
Network Beyond is a Christian organization serving vulnerable and under-resourced people. We focus on three areas: 1. Leadership development - equipping global leaders with biblically based training. 2. Compassion and justice - support for…
Religious
Interserve USA recruits, trains, sends, and supports Christian professionals from America who live and work long term, generally among the poor, in places which need their expertise; especially in medicine, development, education, English…
We are a global Christian organization committed to partnering with indigenous peoples, local churches, and community-based organizations to make disciples of Jesus Christ and help end extreme poverty. We serve indigenous pygmies,…
Disciple Maker Ministries is devoted to fulfilling the Great Commission through evangelism and reproducing discipleship.
Empowering Lives International (ELI) ignites world changers. We equip families and orphans to crush poverty, embrace Christ, and share their transformation with others through their God-honoring income, their deepening relationship with…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Edify and the most unlike its peers is Denver Film Society. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 11 of the 23 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 SERVLIFE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds SERVENOW ↗
- Who funds NDOTO ↗
- Who funds DENVER FILM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WORLD VISION INC ↗
- Who funds International Deaf Education Association ↗
- Who funds STEP INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds KIDZ AT HEART INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds MOSAIC INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds KIM'S OPEN DOOR INC ↗
- Who funds Edify ↗
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: Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Big Joy 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Big Joy Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Big Joy Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
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.