· Private foundation
Schlessman Foundation Inc
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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k99 grants · $1.8M
- $50k–250k9 grants · $1.4M
- $250k+8 grants · $3.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| YMCA OF THE ROCKIES | $1,000,000 |
| FORT LEWIS COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $700,000 |
| DENVER ZOOLOGICAL FOUNDATION | $425,000 |
| ROUNDUP RIVER RANCH | $320,000 |
| WARREN VILLAGE | $320,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $315,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF DENVER | $315,000 |
| GREELEY-WELD HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $255,000 |
| WE DON'T WASTE | $237,500 |
| CRAIG HOSPITAL | $225,000 |
| DENVER BOTANIC GARDENS | $215,000 |
| DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE | $200,000 |
| SUN VALLEY KITCHEN AND COMMUNITY CENTER | $117,500 |
| WOMEN'S BEAN PROJECT | $113,750 |
| CASA DE PAZ | $110,000 |
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, $4.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 97% 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.
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 +37% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
191 repeat relationships — 111 still active in FY2025, 80 since wound down; 5 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $85k 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
YMCA OF THE ROCKIES7× · 2018–2025 · $3.5M · revenue +61%- TCTHE COLORADO COLLEGE7× · 2018–2025 · $2.6M · revenue +43%
- TFTHE FORT LEWIS COLLEGE FOUNDATION7× · 2018–2025 · $2.4M · revenue +193%
Funded once
- DLDENVER LIONS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $408k · revenue -71% · 64% of their budget
- CCCOLORADO COLLEGE COLORADO PLEDGEone grant, 2020 · $400k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $300k
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.
Colorado center on law and policy is an antipoverty organization advancing the rights of every coloradan.
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…
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…
To empower low-income families and individuals towards self-sufficiency and independent living.
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.
Denver children's home restores hope and health to traumatized children and families through a comprehensive array of therapeutic, educational, and community-based services.
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.
We empower people to overcome barriers and achieve lasting well-being through collaborative behavioral health care and comprehensive support.
Colorado Thrives exists to support Coloradans to achieve economic mobility through access to good jobs.
Colorado organization for latina opportunity and reproductive rights (color) is a community-rooted nonprofit organization that works to enable latinx individuals and their families lead safe, healthy, self-determined lives.
Colorado nonprofit association strengthens colorado's nonprofits through education, connection and advocacy.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Denver Children's Advocacy Center and the most unlike its peers is American Diabetes Association. 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 38 years old; the field is 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
196 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. 196 of the 315 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 YMCA OF THE ROCKIES ↗
- Who funds THE COLORADO COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY FRIENDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE FORT LEWIS COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DENVER ZOOLOGICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAVIO HOUSE ↗
- Who funds DENVER ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN BUTTERFLY CONSORTIUM ↗
- Who funds KIDS FIRST HEALTH CARE ↗
- Who funds DENVER BOTANIC GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds WARREN VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds ROUNDUP RIVER RANCH ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF DENVER ↗
- Who funds Colorado Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds DENVER SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KIDS IN NEED OF DENTISTRY ↗
- Who funds GREELEY AREA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds DENVER LIONS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Rocky Mountain Adventist Healthcare Foundation ↗
- Who funds WEDONTWASTE INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF METROPOLITAN DENVER ↗
- Who funds Craig Hospital ↗
- Who funds SCOTTISH RITE FOUNDATION OF COLORADO ↗
- Who funds METRO CARING ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S BEAN PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Casa De Paz ↗
- Who funds WORK OPTIONS FOR WOMEN DBA WORK OPTIONS ↗
- Who funds MINDS MATTER COLORADO INC ↗
- Who funds LISTEN FOUNDATION 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: The Denver Foundation · Colorado Gives Foundation · Rose Community Foundation · The Anschutz Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · Anschutz Family Foundation · Hill Foundation Wells Fargo Bank Na · Daniels Fund · Mile High United Way Inc · The Denver Children's Foundation · Nathan B & Florence R Burt Foundation · The Janus Henderson 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 Schlessman Foundation Inc 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.
- Als Therapy Development Foundation Inc — 8% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Schlessman Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Schlessman Foundation Inc 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.