· Private foundation
Ness Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $9k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $38k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CU FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| THE SUMMIT FOUNDATION | $12,500 |
| BOULDER MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| PROTECT OUR WINTERS | $2,000 |
| RAINBOW SOCKS | $2,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY21–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 96% of your 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.
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 +11% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
11 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2024, 7 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION2× · 2023–2024 · $45k · revenue +3%
- BMBOULDER MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART3× · 2022–2024 · $20k · revenue +100%
- DADENVER ART MUSEUM2× · 2022–2023 · $15k · revenue +52%
Funded once
EVERY MOTHER COUNTSone grant, 2023 · $12k · revenue -13%- MAMACKINTOSH ACADEMY BOULDERone grant, 2023 · $10k
- OBOUT BOULDER COUNTYone grant, 2022 · $5k
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.
The museum of western colorado is an educational institution that collects, preserves, and interprets artifacts, specimens, and information concerning the cultural and natural history of western colorado and the contiguous area. we enhance…
Rocky mountain wild works to protect, connect, and restore wildlife and wild lands in the southern rocky mountain region. we work to secure the biodiversity of the mountains, plains, and desert ecosystems of colorado, wyoming, utah, and…
The Museum at Dinosaur Junction was founded to preserve, study and celebrate fossil remains of dinosaurs and other life forms in the area of Dinosaur Junction near Wolcott, Colorado. In addition, The Museum at Dinosaur Junction leads the…
To provide financial support to the denver museum of nature and science.
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
The museum of contemporary art denver is an innovative forum for contemporary art that inspires and challenges all audiences, creating understanding and dialogue about art of our time.
To create a place of lifelong learning where people, from young child to senior citizen, embrace science as a way of knowing about themselves, their community, and their world.
Educating children and adults through interactive hands-on exhibits and educational programming.
The museum is an educational corporation formed to ignite a life-long passion for exploring, discovering, and valuing nature and science.
To promote and elevate play in northern colorado, because childhood matters. a lot.
The climate museum's mission is to inspire action on the climate crisis with programming across the arts and sciences that deepens understanding, builds connections, and advances just solutions.
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 Rainbow Socks Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 22 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 SNOW LION EDUCATION & FAMILY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds ADVANCE ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOULDER MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART ↗
- Who funds WALKING MOUNTAINS ↗
- Who funds DENVER ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds THE SUMMIT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EVERY MOTHER COUNTS ↗
- Who funds PEDALING MINDS INC ↗
- Who funds DENVER ZOOLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RAINBOW SOCKS INC ↗
- Who funds Colorado Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDRENS MUSEUM OF DENVER INC ↗
- Who funds PROTECT OUR WINTERS ↗
- Who funds THE NEW LOCAL CO ↗
- Who funds THE WILD ANIMAL SANCTUARY ↗
- Who funds WOW CHILDREN'S MUSEUM WORLD OF WONDER ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN BUTTERFLY CONSORTIUM ↗
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 · The Colorado Health Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · 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 Ness Family 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 Ness Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ness Family 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.