· Private foundation
Chris Mikesell Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WESTERN STATE COLORADO UNIV FOUNDATION | $7,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,000 |
| UNICEF USA | $5,000 |
| CRESTED BUTTE LAND TRUST | $5,000 |
| Community Foundation of Gunnison Va | $5,000 |
| Paradise Place Preschool | $4,500 |
| Black Canyon High School | $3,000 |
| Crested Butte Avalanche Center Inc | $3,000 |
| High Country Conservation Advocates | $2,000 |
| The Keewaydin Foundation | $1,000 |
| Freedom Hooves Therapeutic Riding C | $1,000 |
| KANSAS ALLIANCE FOR WETLANDS AND STREAMS | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $17k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 53% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
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 8% of Chris Mikesell 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, 25% of the giving stays in KS; read by stated purpose it is 22% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +114% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 2 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; $8k 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
WESTERN COLORADO UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $60k · revenue +177%- CBCRESTED BUTTE LAND TRUST9× · 2017–2025 · $42k · revenue +193%
UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF8× · 2017–2025 · $39k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- UCUNICEF - CHILD PROTECTION EBOLAone grant, 2023 · $6k
- UFUNICEF-Multi-Country Famine Fundone grant, 2017 · $5k
- UCUNICEF-Syrian Crisis Fundone grant, 2017 · $5k
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.
Rocky mountain wild works to protect, connect, and restore wildlife and wild lands in the southern rocky mountain region. we work to secure the biodiversity of the mountains, plains, and desert ecosystems of colorado, wyoming, utah, and…
To restore water to colorado's rivers.
The wyoming outdoor council's mission is to protect wyoming's environment and quality of life now and for future generations.
To conserve and steward the open lands and natural character of the headwaters of the colorado river in partnership with the local community.
Building leaders to protect the west's land, air, and water.
To protect and enhance agricultural land, wildlife habitat and scenic lands in western colorado to benefit the community at large, enrich lives, and provide opportunities for outdoor recreation for future generations.
Protecting the open land and special places of the roaring fork and middle colorado river valleys for wildlife, agriculture, and community forever.
The montana wildlife federation is a statewide conservation organization dedicated to protecting wildlife, wildlife habitat, and public access for outdoor recreation.
Wyoming wildlife federation delivers leadership in conservation for the state's wildlife, hunters, anglers, and conservationists through policy, education, advocacy, and habitat.
Wildearth guardians works to protect and restore the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the american west.
Greater yellowstone coalition works with all people to protect the lands, waters, and wildlife of the greater yellowstone ecosystem, now and for future generations.
To protect and preserve lands of natural, ecological, scenic, historic, agricultural, or recreational significance in kansas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Foundation of the Gunnison Valley and the most unlike its peers is Montrose Childrens Museum. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 29 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 WESTERN COLORADO UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CRESTED BUTTE LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF THE GUNNISON VALLEY ↗
- Who funds CRESTED BUTTE NORDIC COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds THE KEEWAYDIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MONTROSE CHILDRENS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds DZI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HIGH COUNTRY CONSERVATION ADVOCATES ↗
- Who funds THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF WICHITA KANSAS (2311) ↗
- Who funds THE CLEARWATER COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds KANSAS ALLIANCE FOR WETLANDS AND STREAMS INC ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM HOOVES THERAPEUTIC RIDING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds KANSAS FOODBANK WAREHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds PARADOX SPORTS ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds BLUE SKY RANCH INC ↗
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: Colorado Gives Foundation · Dea Family Foundation · Community Foundation of the Gunnison Valley · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Charities Aid Foundation America · National Philanthropic Trust · Network for Good · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Chris Mikesell 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 Chris Mikesell Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Chris Mikesell 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.