· Private foundation
Dobbins Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
52% of Dobbins Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Colorado Gives Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 5 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Dobbins Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 15 organizations, $28k. 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMM (PEACE AND JUSTICE COALITION EARMARKED FOR A | $2,000 |
| WESTERN COLORADO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| LIFT-UP | $2,000 |
| STAR-C PROGRAMS | $1,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| GREATER COLORADO COUNCIL BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA | $1,200 |
| LORD OF THE STREETS OUTREACH | $1,030 |
| HUMBLE AREA ASSISTANCE MINISTRY (HAAM) | $1,030 |
| POLICING ALTERNATIVES AND DIVERSION INITIATIVES | $1,000 |
| GEORGIA STAND-UP | $1,000 |
| CHATTAHOOCHEE BRICK COMPANY DESCENDANTS COALITION | $1,000 |
| DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE | $1,000 |
| PARTNERS FOR HOME | $1,000 |
| CANOPY ATLANTA | $1,000 |
| PARK PRIDE | $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, $14k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
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 5% of Dobbins 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 +46% since the first grant, against -12% for the ones you funded once.
54 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2023, 40 since wound down; 18 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 FY2025, 41% 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
- ACATLANTA COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC3× · 2017–2021 · $13k · revenue +74%
- PFPARTNERS FOR HOME INC4× · 2020–2023 · $10k · revenue ×16
- GSGeorgia Strategic Alliance for New3× · 2020–2022 · $7k · revenue +54%
Funded once
- ANATLANTA NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +27%
UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEFgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $2k · revenue +76%- CCCaring Choices of Chico Countyone grant, 2018 · $1k
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.
Colorado center on law and policy is an antipoverty organization advancing the rights of every coloradan.
To provide meaningful access to high quality, civil legal services in the pursuit of justice for as many low income persons and members of vulnerable populations throughout colorado as possible.
AIA Colorado,is the voice of the architecture profession in Colorado. Through advocacy, leadership development, education and resources for architects, the organization supports architecture professionals in designing a better world where…
The mission of the colorado coalition for the homeless is to work collaboratively toward the prevention of homelessness and the creation of lasting solutions for families, children, and individuals who are experiencing or at-risk of…
Seeking to put god's love into action, habitat for humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope.
Urban land conservancy's mission is to acquire, develop, and/or preserve community assets in urban areas for a variety of community needs especially in high poverty, low-income, underserved, at-risk communities.
ACP is a group committed to identifying and providing leadership on selected issues important to driving the economic development of the city of Atlanta and for which the ACP's active involvement will make a major difference. The ACP has a…
Colorado nonprofit association strengthens colorado's nonprofits through education, connection and advocacy.
The denver metro chamber of commerce is the architect of tomorrow, igniting change and driving progress to build dynamic economies and communities. we champion innovation, forge powerful partnerships, and relentlessly advocate for our…
The corporation is a voluntary association of individuals and organizations the purposes of which are to upgrade and advance the atlanta metropolitan area in population, commerce and finance; to effect civic and social improvements; to…
Atlanta is #1 for income inequality in the nation. as such, the needs in our community are pressing and we need to move with the urgency of now to address those needs. the community foundation has unequivocally embraced equity as our #1…
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Colorado Gives Foundation and the most unlike its peers is International Rescue Committee 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 39 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 88 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 ATLANTA COMMUNITY FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds PARTNERS FOR HOME INC ↗
- Who funds Georgia Strategic Alliance for New ↗
- Who funds COLORADO COUNCIL ON ECONOMIC EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds GROUNDWORK ATLANTA INC ↗
- Who funds West Atlanta Watershed Alliance ↗
- Who funds INVEST IN KIDS ↗
- Who funds DENVER ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds ATLANTA LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds Crossroads Community Ministries Inc ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC DISTRICT DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF THE ROCKIES ↗
- Who funds ADVOCATE SAFEHOUSE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds COLORADO HOMELESS FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds COLORADO CATTLEMEN'S AGRICULTURAL LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds COLORADO OPEN LANDS ↗
- Who funds SAFEHOUSE DENVER INC ↗
- Who funds DENVER BOTANIC GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds ATLANTA NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds UJIMA WAY INC ↗
- Who funds COLORADO SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds METRO CARING ↗
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 · The Denver Foundation · Georgia Power Foundation Inc · The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta Inc · United Way of Greater Atlanta Inc · Betty and Davis Fitzgerald Foundation Inc · Tull Charitable Foundation Inc · The Arthur M Blank Family Foundation · The Waterfall Foundation Inc · AEC Trust · The Colorado Health Foundation · Mile High United Way 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 Dobbins 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.