· Private foundation
Dave G Ruf Jr Family 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $16k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $107k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $55k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DUCKS UNLIMITED INC | $55,000 |
| COLONIAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $25,000 |
| KANSAS UNIVERSITY PHYSICIANS INC | $25,000 |
| WILLIAM EDUCATIONAL FUND | $25,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS MEMORIAL | $20,000 |
| FOUNDATION FOR ENGINEERING AT KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY INC | $12,000 |
| CURE OF ARS CATHOLIC CHURCH | $5,000 |
| HIGGINS BROTHERS SURGICENTER CO GREATER KANSAS CITY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| PHEASANTS FOREVER | $3,000 |
| STARLIGHT THEATRE KANSAS CITY | $1,996 |
| KU ALUMNI ASSOCIATION | $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 (FY17–25, $55k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 46% 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.
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 11% of Dave G Ruf Jr Family 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.
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 +60% since the first grant, against +33% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2025, 18 since wound down; 3 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, 68% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $57k 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
- DUDucks Unlimited Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $138k · revenue +99%
- LULIFE UNLIMITED INC3× · 2022–2024 · $30k · revenue +112%
- ITIN TIME OF NEED FOUNDATION INC2× · 2019–2020 · $20k · revenue +60%
Funded once
- KEKU ENDOWMENT WILLIAMS EDUCATION FUNDone grant, 2017 · $228k
- THTHE HIGGINS FAMILY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $100k
- BMBISHOP MIEGE HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2023 · $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.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Wetlands america trust, inc. is a nonprofit organization formed in 1985 to expand ducks unlimited, inc's mission to provide leadership in the protection of the natural balance of wetlands ecosystems ensuring the future viability of…
Perc is dedicated to advancing conservation through markets, incentives, property rights, and partnerships.
The american college of radiology (acr) is organized to advance radiology science, practice and access, improve quality and safety, provide continuing education for radiology and allied professionals, and achieve better outcomes through…
The american college of surgeons is dedicated to improving the care of the surgical patient and to safeguarding standards of care in an optimal and ethical practice environment.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
See schedule ouniversity corporation for atmospheric research (ucar), on behalf of, and in cooperation with its member university members, is engaged in the management of long-term atmospheric and related research and educational…
Sanford burnham prebys medical discovery institute's mission is to advance the biomedical sciences by cultivating the next generation of scientific leaders, providing meaningful opportunities for researchers of all backgrounds to learn,…
Ducks unlimited, inc. conserves, restores, and manages wetlands and associated habitats for north america's waterfowl. these habitats also benefit additional wildlife and people.
Assist banner health complete its mission to make health care easier so life can be better by providing integrated & coordinated care & population health management.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is In Time of Need Foundation 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 53 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
32 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. 32 of the 54 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 Ducks Unlimited Inc ↗
- Who funds LIFE UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds Kansas University Physicians Inc ↗
- Who funds IN TIME OF NEED FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS MEMORIAL CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR ENGINEERING AT KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY INC ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR LEAGUE OF WYANDOTTE AND JOHNSON COUNTIES OF KANSAS ↗
- Who funds BINGHAM WAGGONER HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PHEASANTS FOREVER INC ↗
- Who funds AdventHealth Kansas City Foundation ↗
- Who funds PARKINSONS EXERCISE AND WELLNESS CENTER ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds QUAIL AND UPLAND WILDLIFE FEDERATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CRISTO REY KANSAS CITY SISTERS OF CHARI TY OF LEAVENWORTH HIGH SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds ARARAT SHRINERS ↗
- Who funds BROTHERS IN BLUE REENTRY INC ↗
- Who funds Clinton Christian Academy ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds TROUT UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds THE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
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: Greater Kansas City Community Foundation · Servant Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · 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 Dave G Ruf Jr Family 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.