· Private foundation
Melvin & Elaine Wolf 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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k11 grants · $52k
- $10k–50k21 grants · $265k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Jewish Family Service of Colorado Inc | $50,000 |
| DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE | $23,000 |
| Mountain States Children's Home | $20,000 |
| GLOBAL DOWN SYNDROME FOUNDATION | $18,000 |
| NATIONAL JEWISH HEALTH | $18,000 |
| MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | $15,000 |
| Creede Repertory Theatre | $15,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL COLORADO FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| A Precious Child Inc | $11,000 |
| Jewish Community Center of Denver | $10,207 |
| Project Angel Heart | $10,150 |
| CLOTHES TO KIDS OF DENVER | $10,000 |
| TGTHR | $10,000 |
| Riverside Education Center | $10,000 |
| OPERA COLORADO | $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 (FY18–25, $400k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 79% 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 29% of Melvin & Elaine Wolf 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. Read by recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in CO; read by stated purpose it is 71% — 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 +31% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
72 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2025, 42 since wound down; 3 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $11k 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 Foundation7× · 2018–2025 · $773k · revenue +37%
- AVALTA VISTA CENTER FOR AUTISM8× · 2018–2025 · $154k · revenue +36%
- JFJEWISH FAMILY SERVICE OF COLORADO INC4× · 2021–2025 · $130k · revenue +39%
Funded once
- J1JACKSON 105 FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICTone grant, 2018 · $10k
- MAMIZEL ARTS & CULTURE CENTER JCC2× · 2022–2023 · $10k
- DFDENVER FOOD RESCUEgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue +256%
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.
AIA Colorado,is the voice of the architecture profession in Colorado. Through advocacy, leadership development, education and resources for architects, the organization supports architecture professionals in designing a better world where…
Colorado center on law and policy is an antipoverty organization advancing the rights of every coloradan.
To provide meaningful access to high quality, civil legal services in the pursuit of justice for as many low income persons and members of vulnerable populations throughout colorado as possible.
The mission of the colorado coalition for the homeless is to work collaboratively toward the prevention of homelessness and the creation of lasting solutions for families, children, and individuals who are experiencing or at-risk of…
The denver police activities league's (pal) mission is to create strong communities by providing under-resourced children with opportunities, exposure, and experiences with the intent of changing young people's lives in a positive way.
Colorado nonprofit association strengthens colorado's nonprofits through education, connection and advocacy.
The colorado children's campaign relentlessly champions the needs of children. we leverage data, research, and relationships to unapologetically advocate for kids, fighting for a brighter, more equitable future for every child in colorado.…
Colorado Thrives exists to support Coloradans to achieve economic mobility through access to good jobs.
To provide timely, credible and accessible analyses of fiscal and economic issues facing colorado to inform public policy debates and promote economic prosperity
Advance workers rights & social justice through building sustained relationships and taking direct action to create concrete change in the lives of working families
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 Knowing Love Ministries. 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 30 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
80 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. 80 of the 108 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 ALTA VISTA CENTER FOR AUTISM ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICE OF COLORADO INC ↗
- Who funds Colorado Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds OPERA COLORADO ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL DOWN SYNDROME FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL JEWISH HEALTH ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDRENS MUSEUM OF DENVER INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART DENVER ↗
- Who funds Lift Up of Routt County ↗
- Who funds THE BOULDER JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ANGEL HEART ↗
- Who funds FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Mountain States Children's Home ↗
- Who funds BOOK TRAILS INC ↗
- Who funds DELTA GAMMA ANCHOR CENTER FOR BLIND CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds Samaritan Counseling Center ↗
- Who funds ATTENTION INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTERS OF DENVER ↗
- Who funds KARIS COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds JEFFERSON COUNTY LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CANCER LEAGUE OF COLORADO INC ↗
- Who funds BRENT ELEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WONDERBOUND ↗
- Who funds CREEDE REPERTORY THEATRE ↗
- Who funds ALLIED HOUSING INC ↗
- Who funds WARREN VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds CLOTHES TO KIDS OF DENVER INC ↗
- Who funds SEEKING COMMON GROUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE GABBY KRAUSE 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 · The Anschutz Foundation · Mile High United Way Inc · Anschutz Family Foundation · El Pomar Foundation · Schlessman Foundation Inc · Temple Hoyne Buell Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · Hill Foundation Wells Fargo Bank Na
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 Melvin & Elaine Wolf 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Melvin & Elaine Wolf Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Melvin & Elaine Wolf 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.