How much does The Armstrong Foundation give?

The Armstrong Foundation reported 23 grants totaling $6,393,726 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 12 and 22 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does The Armstrong Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Education (83%), Arts & Culture (10%), Health (4%).

Who are The Armstrong Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Southern Methodist University ($11M), Trustees of Westminster School Inc ($4.4M), School of American Ballet Inc ($1.1M).

Does The Armstrong Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 15% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The Armstrong Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as The Armstrong Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Colorado Gives Foundation, The Denver Foundation, The Colorado Health Foundation.

Where is The Armstrong Foundation based?

The Armstrong Foundation is based in CO.

The Armstrong Foundation

The Armstrong Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

The Armstrong 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.

$6.4M

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$4.6M

Largest

01What it funds

0196% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Education$17MArts & Culture$2.1MHealth$906kYouth Development$153kReligion$87kRecreation & Sports$60kEnvironment$38kPhilanthropy$29kOther$0

02FY2025 · 23 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k7 grants · $18k
$10k–50k9 grants · $155k
$50k–250k4 grants · $376k
$250k+3 grants · $5.8M

$10,000

Median grant

States reached

$28M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY	$4,569,426
CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL COLORADO FOUNDATION	$750,000
THE SCHOOL OF AMERICAN BALLET	$525,000
GEORGE W BUSH PRESIDENTIAL CENTER	$150,000
ST MARTIN'S EPISCOPAL SCHOOL	$125,000
WESTMINSTER SCHOOL	$50,750
SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL FOUNDATION	$50,000
COLORADO BALLET	$40,000
ST MICHAEL'S EPISCOPAL SCHOOL	$25,250
HIGHLAND PARK UMC	$25,000
NEW YORK CITY BALLET	$15,000
ONE CHANCE TO GROW UP	$10,000
ATHLETES UNITED	$10,000
TRINITY PARK CONSERVANCY	$10,000
LINCOLN CENTER	$10,000

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 89% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

99%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$20M · 28 repeat orgs$304k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +41% since the first grant, against +5% for those funded once.

28 repeat relationships: 16 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$20M

$212k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+41%

+5%

Still filing today

64%

57%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $93k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Arts & CultureEducationYouth DevelopmentPhilanthropyRecreation & SportsHealthOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

Southern Methodist University
9× · 2017–2025 · $11M · revenue +57%
TO
TRUSTEES OF WESTMINSTER SCHOOL INC
8× · 2017–2025 · $4.4M · revenue +10%
SO
SCHOOL OF AMERICAN BALLET INC
6× · 2017–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +133%

Funded once

BG
BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE CENTRAL COAST
one grant, 2021 · $100k · revenue -7%
SO
SCHOOL OF AMERICAN BALLET
one grant, 2021 · $45k
AF
ALLIANCE FOR CHOICE IN EDUCATIONgraduated
one grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue +100%

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Columbia College Chicago

The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.

Education

Bard College

Bard college seeks to provide a challenging academic program and a supportive environment that fosters a collaborative interchange of ideas in the classroom as well as ambition to achieve excellence.

Education

Dc Bilingual Public Charter School

The mission of dc bilingual public charter school is to create a learning community that ensures high academic achievement for all students in both spanish and english, develops leadership, and values all cultures.

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.

Education

Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

—

Furman University

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.

Education

The Pierpont Morgan Library

The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.

Education

Texas Trees Foundation

The mission of texas trees foundation is to improve the health of cities and people through the transformative power of trees.

—

American Museum of Natural History

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."

Arts & Culture

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)

Arts & Culture

Midland Festival Ballet

Midland festival ballet is a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose mission is to promote and present the art of classical ballet through education, performance, and outreach.

Arts & Culture

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Inc

Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…

Arts & Culture

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Gold Crown Foundation; the most unlike its peers is Dwc Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

32 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 32 of the 50 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

32/32

Grantees still filing

20/32

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Education$16,920,406Arts & Culture$2,059,050Health$855,000Other$749,350Youth Development$113,250Philanthropy$34,250Recreation & Sports$14,500

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Colorado Gives FoundationCO21.6× affinity9 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Colorado Gives Foundation · The Denver Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · The Anschutz Foundation · Rose Community Foundation · Amg Charitable Gift Foundation · The Janus Henderson Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · American Endowment Foundation · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization The Armstrong Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Armstrong Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

1get no government money at all

9report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–75%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to The Armstrong Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The Armstrong 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.

Play a game based on Armstrong’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home