How much does The Flunison Fund give?

The Flunison Fund reported 32 grants totaling $46,200 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 26 and 32 organizations a year over FY2020 to FY2024.

What does The Flunison Fund fund?

By grant dollars over FY2020 to FY2025, its largest causes are Education (22%), Human Services (15%), Arts & Culture (13%).

Who are The Flunison Fund's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2020 to FY2025: Grand Valley Catholic Outreach Inc ($27k), Vision Health International ($21k), Aspen Historical Society ($9k).

Does The Flunison Fund fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 13% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does The Flunison Fund 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 Flunison Fund?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Colorado Gives Foundation, Western Colorado Community Foundation Inc, Arches Foundation.

Where is The Flunison Fund based?

The Flunison Fund is based in CO.

The Flunison Fund

The Flunison Fund at a glance

· Private foundation

The Flunison Fund

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.

$46k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$7k

Largest

01What it funds

01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2025.

Education$52kHuman Services$35kArts & Culture$31kPhilanthropy$28kInternational$21kEnvironment$19kReligion$19kHealth$11kOther$0

02FY2025 · 32 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$1,000

Median grant

States reached

$284k

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
HOLY FAMILY CATHOLIC SCHOOL	$7,000
GRAND VALLEY CATHOLIC OUTREACH	$5,000
ASPEN COMMUNITY FOUNDATION	$5,000
VISION HEALTH INTERNATIONAL	$4,100
ASPEN JOURNALISM	$2,500
KIDS AID	$2,500
FRIENDS OF ST BARTHOLOMEW'S ANGELICAN CHURCH	$2,000
WILDERNES WORKSHOP	$2,000
COLORADO WEST LAND TRUST	$1,500
ART BASE	$1,500
ST MATTHEWS EPISCOPAL CHURCH	$1,500
COLORADO MESA UNIV FOUNDATION	$1,500
ASPEN VALLEY LAND TRUST	$1,500
ASPEN HISTORICAL SOCIETY	$1,500
HILLTOP HEALTH SERVICES	$1,000

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:

Its human-services grants (FY20–25, $33k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% of those 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.

98%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$206k · 36 repeat orgs$4k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +51% since the first grant, against -79% for those funded once.

36 repeat relationships: 29 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$206k

$3k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+51%

-79%

Still filing today

69%

33%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

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

Arts & CultureEducationEnvironmentRecreation & SportsHuman ServicesHealthOther

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

GV
GRAND VALLEY CATHOLIC OUTREACH INC
6× · 2020–2025 · $27k · revenue +16%
VH
VISION HEALTH INTERNATIONAL
6× · 2020–2025 · $21k · revenue +141%
AH
ASPEN HISTORICAL SOCIETY
6× · 2020–2025 · $9k · revenue +54%

Funded once

1
1500
one grant, 2022 · $2k
AC
AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC
3× · 2023–2025 · $2k · revenue -79%
GI
GIBSON ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC
4× · 2020–2023 · $50

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.

Rocky Mountain Wild

Rocky mountain wild works to protect, connect, and restore wildlife and wild lands in the southern rocky mountain region. we work to secure the biodiversity of the mountains, plains, and desert ecosystems of colorado, wyoming, utah, and…

Environment

Aia Colorado

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…

—

Aspen Center for Environmental Studies

Aces' mission is to inspire a life-long commitment to the earth by providing innovative and immersive programming for all ages.

Environment

San Juan Mountains Association

To empower visitors and locals to explore, learn about and protect the spectacular public lands of Southwest Colorado.

Environment

Mountain Area Land Trust

Mountain area land trust's mission is to save natural areas, wildlife habitat, streams and rivers, working ranches and historic lands, for the benefit of the community and as a legacy for future generations.

Environment

Colorado Water Trust

To restore water to colorado's rivers.

Environment

Colorado Museum of Natural History

Be a catalyst! Ignite our community's passion for nature and science.

Arts & Culture

Colorado Press Association

Promote the general interest of daily, weekly, and monthly newspapers and online publications, improve editorials and business methods of daily and weekly newspapers, and advance those newspapers' usefulness and influence in the public…

—

Aspen Science Center

To advance the public understanding of science through lifelong discovery, exploration and education.

Education

Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts

To unite, elevate and empower colorado's conservation community to protect the lands and waters that define our state.

Environment

Public Broadcasting of Colorado Inc

To deliver meaningful news, music, and cultural experiences to everyone in colorado using the power of the human voice in all its forms

Arts & Culture

Glen Canyon Institute

The glen canyon institute has dedicated its resources to the restoration of the glen canyon and a free flowing colorado river

Environment

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Aspen Art Museum; the most unlike its peers is Loma Cat House Inc. 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

29 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. 29 of the 42 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)

29/29

Grantees still filing

21/29

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$114,555Human Services$32,500Philanthropy$27,500International$21,200Arts & Culture$18,150Environment$12,200Education$11,950

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 FoundationCO32.1× affinity15 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Colorado Gives Foundation · Western Colorado Community Foundation Inc · Arches Foundation · Aspen Community Foundation · Aspen Business Center Foundation · Brady Foundation · Alpenglow Foundation · Gates Family Foundation · Ernst and Wilma Martens Foundation · Dornick Foundation Inc · Ruth a Carver Foundation · The Thrift Shop

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 Flunison Fund funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from The Flunison Fund. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

1get no government money at all

12report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–25%

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 Flunison Fund?

Find your warmest path to The Flunison Fund 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 Flunison’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