· Private foundation
Kirk Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
The 43 grants below total $525,000 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $722,500 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $197,500 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 $10k18 grants · $90k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $355k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $80k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| YMCA OF GREATER KANSAS CITY | $80,000 |
| KITE FOUNDATION AT 1433 | $30,000 |
| SYNERGY SERVICES | $25,000 |
| JOHNSON COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $25,000 |
| RECONCILIATION SERVICES | $25,000 |
| MINDDRIVE INC | $25,000 |
| WELCOME HOUSE | $25,000 |
| ROTARY YOUTH CAMP | $25,000 |
| CROSSROADS ACADEMY | $15,000 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF KANSAS CITY | $10,000 |
| PERFORMING ARTS FOUNDATION FOLLY THEATER | $10,000 |
| JR. GOLF FOUNDATION OF GREATER KANSAS CITY (FIRST TEE) | $10,000 |
| KANSAS UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENT ASSOCIATION | $10,000 |
| OPERATION BREAKTHROUGH | $10,000 |
| FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
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.
45 repeat relationships — 36 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 7 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $70k 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
- WHWelcome House Inc4× · 2021–2024 · $150k · revenue +45%
- TKThe Kansas University Endowment Association5× · 2017–2024 · $110k · revenue +93%
- DKDOWNTOWN KANSAS CITY CIVIC VENTURES4× · 2017–2023 · $100k · revenue +65%
Funded once
- YAYOUNG AUDIENCES KANSAS CITY CHAPTERone grant, 2017 · $100k
- MCMID CONTINENT LIBRARYone grant, 2021 · $50k
- KAKANSAS ALPHA OF PHI DELTA THETA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $27k · revenue -93%
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.
Helping people move to a better life through hope-filled care, services, and advocacy; calling all those of goodwill to join us
Grow food, farms and community in support of a sustainable, healthy and local food system.
Bike share kc provides the greater kansas city area with a bike share system designed for transportation, recreation, and exercise.
Offer hope to build a better tomorrow through mental health services.
Engaging and aligning providers and stakeholders to establish Kansas as a role model for health care quality and a top performer in health care outcomes.
Kansas legal services is devoted to helping low income kansans meet their basic needs through the provision of important legal and mediation services.
Leading the way to the best kc region by convening innovative leaders, collaborating with like-minded organizations, advocating for positive change, and helping small businesses grow.
To bring glory to god by providing children with an excellent christ- centered education rooted in the word of god.
Acquire and develop real estate to provide safe, decent, and affordable housing to low-income homeowners while working to ensure a culturally, ethnically, and economically diverse and stable community where generations can thrive in place.
Kacap supports community action agencies and other human services organizations in thier local, state and national efforts to end poverty.
Outreach to help animals suffering in the urban core of kansas city.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Downtown Kansas City Civic Ventures and the most unlike its peers is Kansas Alpha of Phi Delta Theta Educational Foundation. 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 36 years old; the field is 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
39 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. 39 of the 70 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 YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds RECONCILIATION SERVICES ↗
- Who funds Welcome House Inc ↗
- Who funds MINDDRIVE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds The Kansas University Endowment Association ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN KANSAS CITY CIVIC VENTURES ↗
- Who funds YMCA OF THE ROCKIES ↗
- Who funds KANSAS CITY ART INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds GOLF FOUNDATION OF KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds FOOTPRINTS INC ↗
- Who funds SYNERGY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED INNER CITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds HARVESTERS - THE COMMUNITY FOOD NETWORK ↗
- Who funds OPERATION BREAKTHROUGH INC ↗
- Who funds KITE FOUNDATION AT 1433 ↗
- Who funds KANSAS ALPHA OF PHI DELTA THETA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LYRIC OPERA OF KANSAS CITY INC ↗
- Who funds City Union Mission ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds JOHNSON COUNTY LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PAWSPERITY INC ↗
- Who funds NOURISHKC ↗
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: Greater Kansas City Community Foundation · United Way of Greater Kansas City Inc · The Francis Family Foundation · Health Forward Foundation · Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation · Oppenstein Brothers Foundation · The Sunderland Foundation · Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation · The Kansas City Royals Foundation · The H & R Block Foundation · The Sherman Family Foundation · William T Kemper Foundation Commerce Bank Trustee
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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Kirk Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Kirk Foundation 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.