· Private foundation
Mr & Mrs Sanford N McDonnell Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 50% of MR & MRS SANFORD N MCDONNELL FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k40 grants · $134k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $125k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $223k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CHARACTERORG | $100,000 |
| CHARACTERPLUS | $67,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO FOUNDATION | $55,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $25,000 |
| OPERA THEATRE OF SAINT LOUIS | $15,000 |
| DRAKE UNIVERSITY (CHARACTER COUNTS) | $15,000 |
| NINE NETWORK OF PUBLIC MEDIA | $10,000 |
| FOCUS ON THE FAMILY | $10,000 |
| UNION AVENUE OPERA | $10,000 |
| WINTER OPERA ST LOUIS | $10,000 |
| TRANSFORMATIONAL PRAYER FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| SAPPINGTON HOUSE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| SAMARITAN'S PURSE | $5,000 |
| FOREST PARK FOREVER | $5,000 |
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, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 52% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
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 +55% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
82 repeat relationships — 52 still active in FY2024, 30 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO FOUNDATION INC7× · 2018–2024 · $385k · revenue +62%- CCHARACTERPLUS7× · 2017–2024 · $320k · revenue +367%
The Trustees of Princeton University8× · 2017–2024 · $62k · revenue +5%
Funded once
- UOUNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO FOUND'None grant, 2017 · $55k
- BSBOY SCOUTS GREATER ST LOUIS AREA COUNCILone grant, 2017 · $15k
- SLST LOUIS UNIVERSITYone grant, 2019 · $12k · revenue +9%
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
University of the sciences prepares students to become leaders, innovators, and skilled practitioners in the sciences, the health professions, and related disciplines. we deliver excellence in teaching, research, and service through a safe…
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
True to our christian heritage, we prepare students from diverse religious, cultural, educational and economic backgrounds to live life fully.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
The missouri western state university foundation is a not-for-profit charitable organization that functions solely to support the mission of missouri western state university, as stated in the university's mission statement. the foundation…
Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit and Catholic institution of higher education, welcomes students of diverse backgrounds and prepares them to lead meaningful lives with and for others; to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work…
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
Under the medical service plan of the university of maryland school of medicine, medical services are rendered by the members of the faculty on behalf of the school of medicine in connection with their duties to provide clinical…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is St Louis Art Museum Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. 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 48 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
53 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. 53 of the 112 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 UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHARACTERPLUS ↗
- Who funds Opera Theatre of Saint Louis ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds The Trustees of Princeton University ↗
- Who funds MIRIAM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE GREATER ST LOUIS ARTS AND EDUCATION COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER ST LOUIS INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Webster University ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BOARD OF TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds CARDIGAN MOUNTAIN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds DONALD DANFORTH PLANT SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS REGIONAL PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds SAINT LOUIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds MIGHTY OAKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED SERVICE ORGANIZATION USO OF MISSOURI INC ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WINTER OPERA ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds WINGS OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds YOUTH IN NEED ↗
- Who funds Forest Park Forever Inc ↗
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: Centene Foundation · Employees Community Fund of the Boeing Company · St Louis Community Foundation Inc · Moneta Group Charitable Foundation · Edward Jones Foundation · World Wide Technology Foundation · Regional Cultural and Performing Arts Development Commission · St Louis Community Foundation · United Way of Greater St Louis Inc · Commerce Bancshares Foundation · Leon and Mary Strauss Charitable Foundation · The Kranzberg Family Charitable 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 Mr & Mrs Sanford N McDonnell 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.
- The Trustees of Princeton University — 11% of income from government
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.