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· Private foundation

Desert Sun Foundation INC

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$49k
Granted FY2025still arriving
13
Grants FY2025still arriving
2
States reached
$10k
Largest
01What it funds
0190% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2023 to 2025.

Youth Development$50kHuman Services$41kCommunity Improvement$36kArts & Culture$5kReligion$5kScience & Tech$3kFood & Nutrition$2kPublic Benefit$2kOther$0
02FY2025 · 13 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

  • Under $10k12 grants · $39k
  • $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
$3,000
Median grant
2
States reached
$959k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Ficklinger Center$10,000
Individual grant recipient$6,600
Hollomon Spouses Organization$6,035
Alamogordo Mainstreet$5,000
Individual grant recipient$5,000
Kids Inc$5,000
Int Space Hall of Fame oundation$3,000
Roadrunner Food Bank$2,000
Thrive$2,000
Rotary Club of White Sands$1,500
Runners Refuge$1,000
Immaculate Conception Church$1,000
Kitty City Kato Foundation$1,000
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY23–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 20%. 1% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 20%Kids Inc: $5k → 20%Sons of Holy Faith: $1k → 12%Hollomon Spouses Organization: $6k → 20%Roadrunner Food Bank: $2k → 23%Dolly Parton Imagination Library: $5k → 12%Kids Inc: $5k → 20%Holloman Spouses: $3k → 20%Boys Girls Club of Otero County: $23k → 20%Boys Girls Club of Otero County: $14k → 20%Flickinger Center: $14k → 20%Thrive: $10k → 20%Flickinger Center: $10k → 20%Ficklinger Center: $10k → 20%Base Otero: $7k → 20%Alamogordo Mainstreet: $5k → 20%Alamogordo Mainstreet: $5k → 20%Alamogordo Mainstreet: $5k → 20%Thrive: $5k → 20%Prfoject RiseMaingate United: $5k → 20%Int Space Hall of Fame oundation: $3k → 20%Thrive: $2k → 20%Immaculate Conception Church: $2k → 20%Big Brothers Big Sisters: $2k → 20%Alamogordo Center of Commerce: $2k → 20%Rotary Club of White Sands: $2k → 20%Rotary Club of White Sands: $2k → 20%Immaculate Conception Church: $1k → 20%Kitty City Kato Foundation: $1k → 20%Immaculate Conception Church: $1k → 20%Runners Refuge: $1k → 20%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

70%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$110k · 7 repeat orgs$48k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +102% since the first grant, against +14% for those funded once.

7 repeat relationships: 5 still active in FY2025, 2 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

7
5

Total granted

$110k
$13k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+102%
+14%

Still filing today

14%
20%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 30% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k went to new ones.

50%100%’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’23’24’25
Community ImprovementFood & NutritionOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • BG
    Boys Girls Club of Otero County
    2× · 2023–2024 · $38k
  • FC
    Flickinger Center
    2× · 2023–2024 · $24k
  • T
    Thrive
    3× · 2023–2025 · $17k

Funded once

  • THE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATION
    one grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue +14%
  • IG
    Individual grant recipient
    one grant, 2023 · $3k
  • AC
    Alamogordo Center of Commerce
    one grant, 2023 · $2k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

4 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 4 of the 20 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
1
Early backer (in before they grew)
4/4
Grantees still filing
2/4
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Boys Girls Club of Otero County: $37,633 · OtherBoys Girls Club of Otero CountyFlickinger Center: $23,850 · OtherFlickinger CenterThrive: $17,000 · OtherThriveFicklinger Center: $10,000 · OtherFicklinger CenterKIDS CO: $10,000 · OtherKIDS COIndividual grant recipient: $6,600 · OtherHOLLOMAN SPOUSES ORGANIZATION: $6,035 · OtherIndividual grant recipient: $5,000 · OtherTHE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATION: $5,000 · Other+9 more: $20,150 · Other+9 moreALAMOGORDO MAIN STREET: $15,000 · Community ImprovementALAMOGORDO…ROADRUNNER FOOD BANK INC: $2,000 · Food & Nutrition
Other$141,268Community Improvement$15,000Food & Nutrition$2,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetALAMOGORDO MAIN STREET: $15,000 over 3y, 6.4% of budgetHOLLOMAN SPOUSES ORGANIZATION: $6,035 over 1y, 11% of budgetTHE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATION: $5,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetROADRUNNER FOOD BANK INC: $2,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds ALAMOGORDO MAIN STREET ↗
  • Who funds HOLLOMAN SPOUSES ORGANIZATION ↗
  • Who funds THE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
  • Who funds ROADRUNNER FOOD BANK INC ↗

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Desert Sun Foundation INC funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Desert Sun Foundation INC. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%1%4%8%15%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.
    05Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Desert Sun Foundation INC?

    Find your warmest path to Desert Sun Foundation INC 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 20 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

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