· Private foundation
Firman Fund
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k30 grants · $122k
- $10k–50k23 grants · $380k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $40,000 |
| MACLAY SCHOOL | $35,000 |
| TALL TIMBERS RESEARCH | $35,000 |
| DENVER MUSEUM OF SCIENCE | $33,333 |
| MISS HALL'S SCHOOL | $20,000 |
| COLORADO ACADEMY | $20,000 |
| BOCA GRANDE DISASTER FUND | $20,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE BOCA GRANDE COMMUNITY CENTER | $17,000 |
| EATING DISORDER FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| THERE WITH CARE | $15,000 |
| MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| KIPP COLORADO SCHOOLS | $10,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC | $10,000 |
| JOHANN FUST LIBRARY | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY | $10,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $139k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
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.
53 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 8 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $54k 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
- CHChildren's Hospital Colorado Foundation5× · 2020–2024 · $235k · revenue +26%
- TTTALL TIMBERS RESEARCH INC5× · 2020–2024 · $175k · revenue +68%
- ABALFRED B MACLAY JR DAY SCHOOL5× · 2020–2024 · $163k · revenue +82%
Funded once
- DDDENVER DUMB FRIENDS LEAGUEgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $13k · revenue +329%
- NRNEW RIVER FUNDone grant, 2020 · $10k
- UMUNITED METHODIST CHURCHone grant, 2022 · $10k
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.
The peak school seeks to ignite a passion for learning, to develop students of diverse talents and backgrounds who think critically and act with integrity, and to graduate compassionate, confident, capable students who will embrace their…
Fountain valley school of colorado provides a transformative curriculum in a supportive environment where students are challenged to think critically, become leaders, and live by our core values: courage, compassion, curiosity,…
We create confident learners who lead lives of intellectual curiosity, self-knowledge, and social responsibility.
Be a catalyst! Ignite our community's passion for nature and science.
We edify and inspire students and educators to grow, learn and lead.
The philadelphia school educates children for a future that is impossible to know but not impossible to shape. learn here. go anywhere.
We take a joyful, community-oriented approach to raising engaged citizens, deep learners, and brave adventurers with the skills, creativity, and heart needed to better the world.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
The mission of south shore charter school is to cultivate students the tenacity, integrity, and curiosity needed to become innovative and socially responsible leaders, ready to face and solve the ever-changing challenges facing our…
We empower young people to explore and grow their unique intellectual, ethical, and creative capabilities, and to treasure diversity and growth in others.
Believing in the limitless potential of girls, hockaday school develops resilient, confident women who are educated and inspired to lead lives of purpose and impact.
To cultivate student success through mindful perseverance, critical thinking, resourcefulness and advanced knowledge that will prepare students for high levels of success in school, work, and life, while honoring the individuality and…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Childrens Museum of Denver Inc and the most unlike its peers is Roaring Fork Early Language and Literacy Alliance. 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 44 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 1% 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.
43 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. 43 of the 67 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 Children's Hospital Colorado Foundation ↗
- Who funds TALL TIMBERS RESEARCH INC ↗
- Who funds ALFRED B MACLAY JR DAY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds COLORADO ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds MISS HALL'S SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds The Eating Disorder Foundation ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds THERE WITH CARE ↗
- Who funds KIPP Colorado Schools ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHILDREN'S HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEERS FOR OUTDOOR COLORADO ↗
- Who funds BOCA GRANDE HEALTH CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds HAWKEN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF WESTMINSTER SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds ETHEL WALKER SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds HATHAWAY BROWN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds VAIL VALLEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Camp Jacob Inc ↗
- Who funds LEE'S PLACE ↗
- Who funds THE ISLAND SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds ASPEN EDUCATION 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: Colorado Gives Foundation · The Denver Foundation · Rose Community Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · Linda & Barry Allen Foundation · H L Thompson Jr Family Foundation · Arches Foundation · The William Stamps Farish Fund · Aspen Community Foundation · Mile High United Way Inc · El Pomar Foundation · The George and Carol Milne 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 Firman Fund 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Tall Timbers Research Inc — 10% of income from government
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 Firman Fund?
Find your warmest path to Firman Fund 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.