· Private foundation
The Ball Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k4 grants · $70k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $488k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GlobalGiving Foundation | $400,000 |
| EverFi Inc | $400,000 |
| CANd AID Foundation | $250,000 |
| JASON Learning | $200,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $135,000 |
| Childrens Museum of Denver | $52,500 |
| American Red Cross | $50,000 |
| Front Range Community College | $50,000 |
| National Childrens Museum | $25,000 |
| Community Food Share | $15,000 |
| Girls Inc of Metro Denver | $15,000 |
| A Precious Child | $15,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $1.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 95% 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.
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 +42% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
17 repeat relationships — 8 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 4 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $375k 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
- CACan'd Aid5× · 2020–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +20%
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches3× · 2021–2024 · $450k · revenue +27%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION4× · 2020–2023 · $416k · revenue +76%
Funded once
- BABoys and Girls of Americaone grant, 2023 · $200k
- TCThe Children's Hospitalone grant, 2023 · $150k
- FFIRSTone grant, 2022 · $135k
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.
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…
Our mission is to empower colorado students to achieve a lifetime of economic understanding and financial freedom. how will we achieve this mission? by providing economic and personal financial education to students through training…
We connect people, ideas, and nonprofits to make good happen. our vision is that all of jeffco is thriving.
Empower colorado education leaders through advocacy, professional learning and networking to deliver on the promise of public education
The Agile Learner Fund is a nonprofit organization of Colorado Succeeds. As a supporting organization, ALF exists for the express purpose of supporting activities that benefit Colorado Succeeds' mission, vision, and core strategies. More…
See schedule o colorado state university foundation assists in the promotion, development, and enhancement of facilities and educational programs and enhancements of faculty, students, and alumni of colorado state university (csu). this is…
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.
The colorado chamber of commerce mission is to enhance the business climate of the state of colorado by promoting a positive legislative and regulatory environment and providing programs and services for its members, economic education,…
Through individualized learning and responsive mentoring, we inspire, guide and empower students and families.
To perform education and research priorities that work to strengthen Colorado's economic viability. COBRT Partners works to improve the business climate in our state by focusing on key pillars for a sustainable, growing, and global…
Colorado nonprofit association strengthens colorado's nonprofits through education, connection and advocacy.
We foster resiliency in underinvested business communities across colorado by innovatively addressing capital gaps. at energize colorado, we envision a future where we are the go-to destination for business owners seeking comprehensive…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Mile High United Way Inc and the most unlike its peers is Green Up Our Schools. 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 36 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 24% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 34 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 Can'd Aid ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION BOULDER COUNTY ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDRENS MUSEUM OF DENVER INC ↗
- Who funds JASON LEARNING ↗
- Who funds DENVER SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RIVER NETWORK ↗
- Who funds MILE HIGH UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF METRO DENVER ↗
- Who funds THE RECYCLING PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds THE SURFRIDER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Colorado Succeeds ↗
- Who funds Colorado Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds A PRECIOUS CHILD INC ↗
- Who funds COLORADO OPEN GOLF FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COLORADO ROBOTICS EXCELLING AT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds ECO-CYCLE INC ↗
- Who funds National Children Museum ↗
- Who funds GREEN UP OUR SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOOD SHARE INC ↗
- Who funds Colorado Association of Black Professional Engineers & Scientists ↗
- Who funds I Have A Dream Foundation Of Boulder County ↗
- Who funds GIRLS IN STEM ↗
- Who funds LATIN AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL 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: Colorado Gives Foundation · The Denver Foundation · Rose Community Foundation · The Janus Henderson Foundation · Daniels Fund · Xcel Energy Foundation · Mile High United Way Inc · Adolph Coors Foundation · Rose Foundation · El Pomar Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · Amg Charitable Gift 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 The Ball 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 The Ball Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ball 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.