· Public charity
Denver Zoological Foundation
Inspiring communities to save wildlife for future generations.
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.
The 5 grants below total $101,400 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $364,958 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $263,558 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $10k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $92k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY | $40,000 |
| REWILD | $22,000 |
| WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY | $19,500 |
| INTERNATIONAL ELEPHANT FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE | $9,900 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY19–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 18%, against an area that typically sits at 15%. 44% of your 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.
Grants abroad, by region — $254k on the FY2024 return
Schedule F, as filed: 4 regions, $126k to organizations and $128k to individuals. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: PROJECT SUPPORT
Stated purpose: SAMARKILANG RESEARCH
Stated purpose: SALARY SUPPORT FOR V · LION MONITORING SUPP
Stated purpose: CAPACITY BUILDING, G
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 31% of Denver Zoological 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.
8 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
- IEINTERNATIONAL ELEPHANT FOUNDATION4× · 2017–2024 · $55k · revenue +70%
REWILD2× · 2023–2024 · $45k · revenue +41%- CSConservation Science Partners Inc2× · 2019–2020 · $30k · revenue +74%
Funded once
- MHMOORE HYDROLOGY LLCone grant, 2017 · $12k
- ROREGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADOone grant, 2021 · $10k
- HPHermits Peak Watershed Alliancegraduatedone grant, 2020 · $8k · revenue +136%
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.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
To protect endangered species.
The California Wilderness Coalition protects the natural landscapes that make California unique, providing clean air and water, a home to wildlife, and a place for recreation and spiritual renewal.
The Earth Species Project (ESP) develops frontier AI to amplify the voices of nature, creating new pathways for the transformation of our systemsand ourselves. We envision a relationship with the rest of nature that allows the diversity of…
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Cascadia wildlands defends and restores cacasia's wild ecosystems in the forests,in the courts, and in the streets. we envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and…
Defenders of Wildlife is a national, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities.
Our mission is to protect vital areas of our natural world for the benefit of wildlife, habitats, and people by inspiring collaborative action. Our vision is a world where wildlife and people flourish in healthy ecosystems that sustain us…
Endangered Species International is strongly committed to reversing the trend of human-induced species extinction, saving endangered animals, and preserving wild places.
Support ecosystem-based wildlife management by increasing public awareness of wildlife issues, responding to information requests, advocating for science-based wildlife habitat management through proposal and comment submissions, and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Rewild and the most unlike its peers is Smithsonian Institution. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 14 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 INTERNATIONAL ELEPHANT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds REWILD ↗
- Who funds Conservation Science Partners Inc ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds IDEA WILD INC ↗
- Who funds Hermits Peak Watershed Alliance ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC LAND ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF ZOOLOGICAL PARKS AND AQUARIUMS 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: National Philanthropic Trust · 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 Zoological 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.