· Private foundation
Smiling Life 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $30k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Children's Hospital Of Colorado | $20,000 |
| Humane Society of Boulder | $10,000 |
| Jarrow School Inc | $7,000 |
| Cyclists 4 Community | $5,000 |
| Girls With Books | $5,000 |
| Best Buddies International | $2,500 |
| Denver County School District | $1,500 |
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 (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 66% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 5% of Smiling Life 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, 82% of the giving stays in CO; read by stated purpose it is 76% — 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 +30% since the first grant, against +26% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 2 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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 Colorado5× · 2021–2025 · $63k · revenue +30%
- THTHE HUMANE SOCIETY OF BOULDER VALLEY INC5× · 2021–2025 · $53k · revenue +9%
- TCTHE CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF TORTURE3× · 2022–2024 · $30k · revenue +4%
Funded once
- CHChildren's Hospital Colorado Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $15k · revenue +26%
- BHBoulder Humane Societyone grant, 2020 · $15k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $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.
We save children's lives by transforming pediatric heart care in underserved parts of the world.
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
We champion the health needs of children and families. we are committed to improving children's health by providing the highest-quality, family centered care, advanced through research and education.
Orbis builds strong and sustainable eye care systems globally that put treatment and prevention within reach
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
The mission of children's hospital & research center at oakland is to protect and advance the health and well-being of children through clinical care, teaching and research.
To change the lives of people with disabilities by promoting their physical, psychological and social well-being through equine-assisted activities.
JOY International is dedicated to the prevention of child trafficking and to the freedom, healing, and empowerment of trafficked children, teens, and young adults worldwide.
To inspire hope and promote lifelong health by providing the best care to every child.
Elevating health across our mountain communities.
To further the cause of world peace and understanding by facilitating free medical services, primarily to children suffering from heart defects and other similar or allied illnesses regardless of race, gender, creed, or national origin,…
A Shared Vision educates, inspires, and empowers families to nurture the development of their young children who are blind or visually impaired. We provide early intervention vision services in families' homes and community settings…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Opportunity International Inc D/B/a Opportunity International-Us and the most unlike its peers is Miracles Therapeutic Riding Center. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
11 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. 11 of the 17 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 ↗
- Who funds THE HUMANE SOCIETY OF BOULDER VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF TORTURE ↗
- Who funds Girls With Books ↗
- Who funds JARROW SCHOOL INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Colorado Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE VERTILE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CYCLISTS 4 COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL INC D/B/A OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL-US ↗
- Who funds Miracles Therapeutic Riding Center ↗
- Who funds Best Buddies International 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: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Smiling Life 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.
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% 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.