· Community foundation
Blue Grass Community Foundation Inc
Established in 1967, blue grass community foundation's mission is to improve the quality of life in the bluegrass region by increasing charitable giving and leading on critical community issues.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 514 grants below total $20,720,184 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $27,250,165 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $6,529,981 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k138 grants · $994k
- $10k–50k271 grants · $5.7M
- $50k–250k88 grants · $8.2M
- $250k+17 grants · $5.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE FAYETTE EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $520,164 |
| ROBERT L BROWN FOUNDATION INC | $480,384 |
| UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY ATHLETICS | $404,325 |
| WHETSTONE BOYS RANCH | $400,000 |
| SAFE PASSAGE | $396,590 |
| FAYETTE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $379,123 |
| FOUNDATION FOR APPALACHIAN KENTUCKY | $369,533 |
| HOUSING DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE | $350,000 |
| HOUSING ORIENTED MINISTRIES ESTABLISHED FOR SERVICES INC | $350,000 |
| CLARK COUNTY COMMUNITY SERVICES | $294,275 |
| GATTON PARK ON THE TOWN BRANCH | $292,272 |
| CLARK COUNTY HOMELESS COALITION | $281,957 |
| FRANKLIN COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT | $272,242 |
| UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY | $254,965 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF THE BLUEGRASS | $251,207 |
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 (FY17–25, $4.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 96% 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 +36% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
531 repeat relationships — 363 still active in FY2025, 168 since wound down; 124 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.8M 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
- AEAMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH2× · 2023–2024 · $3.0M · revenue +40%
- TBTOWN BRANCH PARK INC6× · 2020–2025 · $2.9M · revenue +7% · 42% of their budget
- WBWHETSTONE BOYS RANCH6× · 2020–2025 · $1.2M · revenue +45%
Funded once
- KBKENTUCKY BLOOD CENTER INCone grant, 2018 · $1.0M · revenue +24%
- UCUNION CHURCHone grant, 2022 · $573k
- 1C1 CLAY COUNTY INCone grant, 2024 · $425k
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.
Healthfirst provides outpatient primary healthcare, behavioral health and dental services to the underserved and uninsured residents of fayette county and surrounding counties in kentucky.
Kentucky harvest's purpose is to end local hunger by connecting with food donors and engaging volunteers to rescue excess food and move it from those who have it to those in need.
Everything we do is market-focused and proactively promotes and protects the interests of the southeast dairy farm families.
Addressing the unmet health needs of kentuckians by developing and influencing policy, improving access to care, reducing health risks and disparities, and promoting health equity. the foundation makes grants, conducts campaigns, supports…
To stand for ky families and the biblical values that make them strong. work to educate and advocate for biblically sound public policy, including life, marriage & family, and religious freedom, that points people back to gods design for…
To provide effective advocacy for the financial services industry both in kentucky and on a national level; to serve as a reliable and responsive source of information and education about areas of interest to the industry; and to provide a…
Facilitate agricultural and rural business development in kentucky by 1) providing leadership, educational, technical and financial resources and 2) improving the economic conditions of rural kentucky through promoting development of new…
Broadens the perspectives of current and emerging leaders through experiential education that inspires them to advance kentucky.
To serve those in need by acquiring and distributing food, grocery items, and government commodities through a network of charitable partnering agencies in 42 kentucky counties.
The kentucky college of art and design opens the door to a creative and productive life through an undergraduate education in the contemporary arts.
To support those in need and improve the quality of life throughout the commonwealth of kentucky.
To maintain a proper discipline of the members of the bar in accordance with the rules set forth by the kentucky supreme court and with the principles of the legal profession as a public calling, to initiate and supervise, with the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Life Plan of Kentucky Inc and the most unlike its peers is Patty Marsh Biddle Archives Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 31 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
725 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. 725 of the 1,050 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 FOUNDATION FOR APPALACHIAN KENTUCKY INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds TOWN BRANCH PARK INC ↗
- Who funds ROBERT L BROWN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BANK OF AMERICA CHARITABLE GIFT FD ↗
- Who funds LEGACY GREENSCAPES INC ↗
- Who funds LEXINGTON CHILDREN'S THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds WHETSTONE BOYS RANCH ↗
- Who funds CROWN HILL CEMETERY ↗
- Who funds FOODCHAIN INC ↗
- Who funds KENTUCKY BLOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ROWLAND ARTS CENTER ↗
- Who funds NEWMAN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ESPERANZA INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSING DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds LEXINGTON RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF THE BLUEGRASS INC ↗
- Who funds GOD'S PANTRY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds CLARK COUNTY HOMELESS COALITION INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL EUROPEAN CHRISTIAN EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CIVICLEX INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds CLARK COUNTY COMMUNITY SERVICES IN ↗
- Who funds RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF THE BLUEGRASS INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC EDUCATION FOR YOUTH ↗
- Who funds STABLE RECOVERY INC ↗
- Who funds HOUSING ORIENTED MINISTRIES ESTABLISHED FOR SERVIC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR WOMEN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds THE DYNAMIC CATHOLIC INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds WINCHESTER COUNCIL FOR THE ARTSINC DBA LEEDS CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
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: Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels Inc · United Way of the Bluegrass Inc · LG&E and Ku Foundation Inc · Elhapa Foundation Inc · Keeneland Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Louisville Inc · Snowy Owl Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Louisville Depository Inc · The King's Daughters and Sons Foundation of Kentucky Inc · Roaring Brook Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation of Louisville Corporate Depository Inc · Christian Word Ministries Inc
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 Blue Grass Community Foundation Inc 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.
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 0% of income from government
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.