· Public charity
Kershaw's Challenge
KERSHAW'S CHALLENGE mission is to provide funds and other assistance to build schools and orphanages in the town of lusaka in the country of zambia and to provide support for other organizations in the united states.
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.
By grant size · FY2024
- $50k–250k8 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+3 grants · $915k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION | $320,000 |
| BOTH ENDS BELIEVING | $320,000 |
| DREAM CENTER | $275,000 |
| BONTON FARMS | $220,000 |
| ARISE AFRICA | $200,000 |
| ACTION IN AFRICA | $175,000 |
| FOR THE NATIONS | $160,000 |
| FOR OAK CLIFF | $150,000 |
| LOS ANGELES DODGERS FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
| HOPE WALKS | $130,000 |
| SHOES THAT FIT | $100,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $7.7M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 73% 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.
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 33% of Kershaw's Challenge’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. Read by recipient address, 57% of the giving stays in TX; read by stated purpose it is 40% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +88% since the first grant, against -10% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 2 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $175k 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
- AAARISE AFRICA INC8× · 2017–2024 · $2.8M · revenue +244% · 31% of their budget
- IJINTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION7× · 2018–2024 · $2.2M · revenue +88%
- BEBOTH ENDS BELIEVING INC6× · 2019–2024 · $2.1M · revenue +266% · 29% of their budget
Funded once
- IFINTERFAITH FAMILY SERVICESone grant, 2018 · $340k · revenue -10%
CURE INTERNATIONAL INCone grant, 2017 · $333k · revenue +4%- CPCONNECTING POINT OF PARK CITIESgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $250k · revenue +88% · 61% of their budget
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.
Inclusive Development International supports communities around the world to defend their rights and resources in the face of harmful corporate activities and internationally financed development projects, and we advocate for a more just…
As part of the body of Christ, to see that every young person in every people group in every nation has the opportunity to make an informed decision to be a follower of Jesus Christ and become a part of the local church.
Devworks international is dedicated to a society where all people enjoy the freedom to pursue their own sustainable development. we contribute to this by strengthening the capacity of local organizations.
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
To be the love of christ to uganda's orphaned and vulnerable children, equipping them to become authentic godly leaders that transform generations
Compassion exists to release children from poverty in Jesus' name. Compassion serves all children, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or gender.
Children's house international provides ethical adoption services, child focused recruitment, and family support. we support disadvantaged children with humanitarian aid in countries worldwide.
Christianity Today is a global community inspired by evangelical conviction to advance the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God. Our mission is to elevate the storytellers and sages of the global church.
One child global's mission is to advocate for children in hard places and provide holistic care so they have hope and thrive. onechild global's 355 hope centers provide holistic child development progress in nineteen countries.
Firelight supports catalytic community-based organizations in eastern and southern africa that work with their own communities to realize shared visions of sustainable change and true potential for children and youth.
Vision: a world where no child's life is torn apart by war.children in conflict works tirelessly to restore hope, safety and childhoods to children whose lives are affected by war.
To invest in and hold ownership positions in micro-finance institutions serving the poor.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Both Ends Believing Inc and the most unlike its peers is Connecting Point of Park Cities. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 19 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 ARISE AFRICA INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE MISSION ↗
- Who funds BOTH ENDS BELIEVING INC ↗
- Who funds DREAM CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BEHIND EVERY DOOR MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds SHOES THAT FIT ↗
- Who funds THE LOS ANGELES DODGERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOR OAK CLIFF ↗
- Who funds BONTON ENTERPRISES ↗
- Who funds For the Nations Refugee Outreach ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH FAMILY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CURE INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE WALKS INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTING POINT OF PARK CITIES ↗
- Who funds WEST DALLAS COMMUNITY SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ACTION IN AFRICA INC ↗
- Who funds NEW FRIENDS NEW LIFE ↗
- Who funds JUST KEEP LIVIN 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: Kershaw Foundation · Communities Foundation of Texas Inc · The Dallas Foundation · The Rees-Jones Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · Dallas Alumnae Association of Kappa Kappa Gamma Foundation Inc · Prairie Creek Partners Charitable Foundation · Katherine C Carmody Charitable Tuw · Hillcrest Foundation · The Moody Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Kershaw's Challenge 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 Kershaw's Challenge?
Find your warmest path to Kershaw's Challenge 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.