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· Private foundation

Make Life Better Foundation

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$26k
Granted FY2022
3
Grants FY2022
2
States reached
$15k
Largest
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2022.

Food & Nutrition$15kInternational$10kHuman Services$7kCommunity Improvement$3kHealth$3kHousing & Shelter$1kRecreation & Sports$950Education$500
02FY2022 · 3 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2022

  • Under $10k1 grant · $1k
  • $10k–50k2 grants · $25k
$10,000
Median grant
2
States reached
$16k
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
Rooted in Wyoming$15,000
Int'l Rescue Committee$10,000
Candy Cane CornerVolunteers of America Utah$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:

Its human-services grants (FY17–20, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Its grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 9%UTAH POLICE CIVILIAN ASSOCIATION INC: $3k → 8%UTAH POLICE CIVILIAN ASSOCIATION INC: $2k → 8%UTAH POLICE CIVILIAN ASSOCIATION INC: $1k → 8%UTAH POLICE CIVILIAN ASSOCIATION INC: $1k → 8%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 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 8 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

ROOTED IN WYOMING: $15,000 · EducationROOTED IN WYOMING+1 more: $500 · EducationInternational Rescue Committee INC: $10,000 · InternationalInternational Rescue Committ…BYU MANAGEMENT SOCIETY UTAH VALLEY CHAPTER: $2,750 · OtherBYU MANAGEMENT SOCIE…CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION: $2,500 · OtherCYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUN…Candy Cane CornerVolunteers of America Utah: $1,000 · OtherCandy Cane CornerVol…WESTLAKE HIGH SCHOOL: $950 · OtherWESTLAKE HIGH SCHOOLUTAH POLICE CIVILIAN ASSOCIATION: $6,500 · Human ServicesUTAH POLICE CIVILI…
Education$15,500International$10,000Other$7,200Human Services$6,500

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

25%50%75%100%$1.0M$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetROOTED IN WYOMING: $15,000 over 1y, 6.0% of budgetInternational Rescue Committee INC: $10,000 over 1y, 0.0% of budgetUTAH POLICE CIVILIAN ASSOCIATION: $6,500 over 4y, 1.3% 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.

How much its grantees rely on government

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

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%1%3%6%10%funder's share of their income ↑0%10%20%30%40%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    1report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–40%
    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.
    04Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Make Life Better Foundation?

    Find your warmest path to Make Life Better 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.

    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 8 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 2022, released 2022. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2025) is on record but names no grant recipient in the published copy, so the figures above are from FY2022, the most recent year this funder’s grantee list reached the public record.

    Source object · view filing

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