· Community foundation
The Denver Foundation
To inspire people and mobilize resources to strengthen our community.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 1,184 grants below total $131,693,864 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $143,235,358 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $11,541,494 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k128 grants · $904k
- $10k–50k629 grants · $13M
- $50k–250k348 grants · $32M
- $250k+79 grants · $86M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST | $25,000,000 |
| PLENTIFUL | $4,000,000 |
| DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION - DPS FOUNDATION | $3,246,196 |
| DENVER HEALTH FOUNDATION | $2,650,879 |
| REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY | $2,176,316 |
| BARTON INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY ACTION | $2,106,500 |
| URBAN PEAK | $2,028,660 |
| COLORADO COMMUNITY COLLEGE SYSTEM FOUNDATION | $2,010,129 |
| NORTHEAST AMERICAN DIOCESE OF THE MALANKARA ORTHODOX SYRIAN CHURCH | $2,000,000 |
| MALANKARA ORTHODOX SYRIAN CHURCH DIOCESE OF SOUTH-WEST AMERICA | $2,000,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL COLORADO FOUNDATION | $1,691,233 |
| UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION | $1,431,553 |
| THE GATHERING PLACE | $1,426,618 |
| COBALT FOUNDATION | $1,275,883 |
| MORGAN STANLEY GLOBAL IMPACT FUNDING TRUST INC | $1,239,085 |
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 (FY17–24, $42.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 68% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of The Denver 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.
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 +49% since the first grant, against +24% for the ones you funded once.
1435 repeat relationships — 832 still active in FY2024, 603 since wound down; 128 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $21M 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
DENVER HEALTH AND HOSPITALS FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $15M · revenue +168% · 43% of their budget- UOUNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $14M · revenue +79%
- CHChildren's Hospital Colorado Foundation8× · 2017–2024 · $13M · revenue +42%
Funded once
- DBDenver Broncos Foundationone grant, 2023 · $9.3M · revenue +14%
- APAGORA PARTNERSHIPSone grant, 2017 · $1.5M · revenue +8% · 53% of their budget
- TRTRANSFORMING RESEARCH INTO ACTION TO IMPROVE THE LIVES OF STUDENTSone grant, 2023 · $750k
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…
To harness the collective power of nonprofits and philanthropic changemakers to accelerate community impact.
Healthier colorado is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to raising the voices of coloradans in the public policy process to improve the health of our state's residents. we believe that every coloradan should have a fair…
To develop conscientious, self-confident, multilingual, and multicultural thinkers.
The Colorado Democracy Alliance is an organization committed to protecting democracy and expanding Colorados civic engagement ecosystem.
Empower colorado education leaders through advocacy, professional learning and networking to deliver on the promise of public education
Rocky Mountain Values is a Colorado non-profit organization that is made up of real Coloradans fighting to make sure that we can all earn a good living and have a good life no matter our zip code.
To develop leaders that will become a strong, unified voice for agricultural issues.
We create economic vitality through memorable visits to the wonders of Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak Region.
Prime health advances health justice, equity, access quality and cost through innovation, collaboration, and community building.
Endeavor colorado is a not-for-profit leading the high-impact entrepreneurship movement in colorado to catalyze long-term economic growth by selecting, mentoring, and supporting the best high-impact entrepreneurs in our region. high-impact…
Advocates against sexual assault
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is George W Clayton Trust and the most unlike its peers is La Clinica Tepeyac. 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 26 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
1766 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. 1766 of the 2,000 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 NATIONAL PHILANTHROPIC TRUST ↗
- Who funds DENVER HEALTH AND HOSPITALS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Children's Hospital Colorado Foundation ↗
- Who funds COLORADO GIVES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Denver Broncos Foundation ↗
- Who funds LIFESPAN LOCAL INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF THE ROCKIES ↗
- Who funds DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BARTON INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY ACTION ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF METRO DENVER INC ↗
- Who funds IMPACT CHARITABLE ↗
- Who funds TRAILHEAD INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds URBAN PEAK DENVER ↗
- Who funds Craig Hospital Foundation ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF DENVER ↗
- Who funds One Good Turn ↗
- Who funds SAINT JOSEPH HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Learning Ally Inc ↗
- Who funds PLENTIFUL ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN STATE UNIVERSITY OF DENVER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE COLORADO NONPROFIT DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds DENVER ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds The Alliance For Collective Action ↗
- Who funds OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL INC D/B/A OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL-US ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF COLORADO INC ↗
- Who funds NOURISH COLORADO ↗
- Who funds COLORADO SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds COLORADO MESA UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE GATHERING PLACE A REFUGE FOR REBUILDING LIVES ↗
- Who funds COLORADO COMMUNITY COLLEGE SYSTEM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds NEW VENTURE FUND ↗
- Who funds Rose Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN IMMIGRANT ADVOCACY NETWORK ↗
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: Rose Community Foundation · The Colorado Health Foundation · Caring for Denver Foundation · Schlessman Foundation Inc · Caring for Colorado Foundation · Latino Community Foundation of Colorado Inc · Caring for Colorado Centennial Fund · The Anschutz Foundation · Gary Philanthropy · The Women's Foundation of Colorado Inc · Hill Foundation Wells Fargo Bank Na · Boettcher 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 Denver 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.
- Icivics Inc — 13% of income from government
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc — 7% of income from government
- Learning Ally Inc — 4% of income from government
- Masschallenge Inc — 3% of income from government
- Oregon State University Foundation — 0% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% 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.