· Private foundation
Making Life Better Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2022–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $54k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $96k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RANCHO FELIZ CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC | $96,000 |
| WON BY ONE TO JAMAICA | $24,000 |
| THE CENTER FOR APPLIED LEARNING AND LEADERSHIP | $15,000 |
| PARTNERS IN HOUSING INC A COLORADO NON-PROFIT CORP | $15,000 |
| UNIVERSITY SCHOOLS | $7,000 |
| FOOD BANK OF NORTH ALABAMA | $5,000 |
| COLORADO CONSORTIUM FOR EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE ED | $3,000 |
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 (FY22–25, $314k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 15% of Making Life Better 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.
4 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 1 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- RFRANCHO FELIZ CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC4× · 2022–2025 · $311k · revenue +78%
- TCTHE CENTER FOR APPLIED LEARNING &4× · 2022–2025 · $55k · revenue +62%
- WBWON BY ONE TO JAMAICA2× · 2022–2025 · $35k · revenue +44%
Funded once
- GMGhana Make a Differencegraduatedone grant, 2024 · $20k · revenue +46%
- TCTRI-LAKES CARESgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $3k · revenue +93%
- MBM Bledsoeone grant, 2022 · $3k
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.
We help families experiencing homelessness find lasting independence and security.
Provide food and financial assistance to the local community.
Homes 4 Homes brings safe housing to people in developing countries. We empower local leaders and construction teams to build homes for at risk members of their own communities. Safe and secure housing positively impacts multiple…
Hope House of Sedona provides families experiencing homelessness access to safe haven, support, and tools for lasting stability.
We provide homes, a healthy diet, medical treatment, quality education, and counseling for orphaned abused and neglected children in Tanzania, East Africa. Sonshine works directly with Child Welfare Services of Tanzania. CWS provides…
Acres of Diamonds offfers moms and their children a community-centered, non-traditional approach to transitional housing. our mission is to break the cycle of homelessness by providing holistic, long-term solutions that empower families to…
Transition House is dedicated to the solution of family homelessness in the Santa Barbara community. Capable and motivated families with children are offered life tools and respectful, non-sectarian residential services designed to…
Community Action Services and Food Bank works to stabilize families and then rebuild their lives. We help meet their basic needs (food, shelter, housing) while providing the long-term solutions needed to rebuild their financial and social…
Faith Family Hospitality's mission is to support families experiencing homelessness to achieve sustainable self-sufficiency in a timely and dignified manner. This interfaith volunteer effort coordinates the work of 30 diverse Fort Collins…
The Foothills Food Bank works to ensure access to quality, nutritious food to community members in need, and deliver services with respect and dignity.
HCP, in partnership with other non-profits, community organizations, volunteers and businesses, provides education, clean water, latrines, and medical services to enhance self-sufficiency, healthy living and dignity within the La Paz…
We build relationships that enhance the development of skills, foster a sense of worth and enhance a belief in each child's individual potential.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Tri-Lakes Cares and the most unlike its peers is University Schools. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 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. 9 of the 11 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 RANCHO FELIZ CHARITABLE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR APPLIED LEARNING & ↗
- Who funds WON BY ONE TO JAMAICA ↗
- Who funds Ghana Make a Difference ↗
- Who funds StableStrides ↗
- Who funds Partners in Housing Inc ↗
- Who funds University Schools ↗
- Who funds Food Bank of North Alabama Inc ↗
- Who funds TRI-LAKES CARES ↗
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: Pikes Peak Community Foundation · El Pomar Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc · Network for Good · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Making Life Better 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.