· Private foundation
Denver Kiwanis 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
100% of Denver Kiwanis Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to Community First Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 0 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Denver Kiwanis Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 12 organizations, $46k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OPEN DOOR YOUTH GANG ALTERNATIVE | $9,000 |
| SWEET DREAM IN A BAG | $4,500 |
| SECOND WIND FUND | $3,500 |
| FRIENDS OF PAHA | $3,000 |
| GRIFFITH CENTERS FOR CHILDREN | $3,000 |
| DENVER EAST HIGH RUGBY | $2,500 |
| A PRECIOUS CHILD | $2,500 |
| ANCHOR CENTER FOR BLIND CHILDREN | $2,500 |
| LISTEN FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| BOY SCOUTS OF DENVER | $2,500 |
| DENVER SANTA CLAUS SHOP | $2,000 |
| LIMB PRESERVATION FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| MOUNT SAINT VINCENT | $2,000 |
| SCHOLARS UNLIMITED | $1,650 |
| ROCKY MT DISTRICT FOUNDATION | $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 (FY17–23, $76k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 6%. 52% 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 61% of Denver Kiwanis 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.
21 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2023, 6 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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 FY2023, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- GCGRIFFITH CENTERS7× · 2017–2023 · $39k · revenue +24%
- SWSECOND WIND FUND INC7× · 2017–2023 · $24k · revenue +249%
- SDSWEET DREAM IN A BAG INC5× · 2017–2023 · $21k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- BRBULLYING RECOVERY RESOURCE CENTERgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +253%
- HGHIGHER GROUND YOUTH CHALLENGEone grant, 2017 · $2k · revenue 0%
- KMKepner Middle Schoolone grant, 2017 · $2k
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 partner with youth and their families as they successfully navigate school, college, and career by providing a holistic academic, social, and emotional program from elementary school through college, along with post-secondary…
Support education and advocacy for LGBTQ + people and families
The purpose of the Rise School of Denver is to provide the highest quality inclusive early childhood education and therapy for children with and without developmental disabilities. We do this by providing exemplary school- and clinic-based…
Youth counseling and mentoring.
The denver police activities league's (pal) mission is to create strong communities by providing under-resourced children with opportunities, exposure, and experiences with the intent of changing young people's lives in a positive way.
Denver children's home restores hope and health to traumatized children and families through a comprehensive array of therapeutic, educational, and community-based services.
Heart & hand center is dedicated to a world with no opportunity gap. by creating a nurturing community, heart & hand empowers all young people to realize their potential.
Denver scholarship foundation (dsf) inspires and empowers denver public schools (dps) students to enroll in and graduate from postsecondary institutions of higher education by providing the tools, knowledge, and financial resources for…
Elevating Connections is dedicated to building sustained positive relationships for current & former youth in foster care-including those experiencing sibling separation-to find their voice & build meaningful community connections.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Griffith Centers and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Paha. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 28 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 COLORADO GIVES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPEN DOOR YOUTH GANG ALTERNATIVES ↗
- Who funds GRIFFITH CENTERS ↗
- Who funds SECOND WIND FUND INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF PAHA ↗
- Who funds SWEET DREAM IN A BAG INC ↗
- Who funds LISTEN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THERE WITH CARE ↗
- Who funds THE DENVER SANTA CLAUSE SHOP INC ↗
- Who funds LIMB PRESERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DELTA GAMMA ANCHOR CENTER FOR BLIND CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds A PRECIOUS CHILD INC ↗
- Who funds SUMMER SCHOLARS ↗
- Who funds BULLYING RECOVERY RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds HIGHER GROUND YOUTH CHALLENGE ↗
- Who funds THE URBAN FARM ↗
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: The Denver Foundation · Colorado Gives Foundation · The Denver Children's Foundation · Schlessman Foundation Inc · El Pomar Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · American Online Giving Foundation 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 Denver Kiwanis 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 Denver Kiwanis Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Denver Kiwanis 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.