· Private foundation
The John and Alison Ferring Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k14 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $175k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $258k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ARCH CITY DEFENDERS | $150,000 |
| ST LOUIS SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL | $58,000 |
| FLANCE EARLY LEARNING CENTER | $50,000 |
| MED & FOOD FOR KIDS | $27,500 |
| FINE ARTS WORK CENTER | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| VIA FUND | $25,000 |
| LIFT FOR LIFE ACADEMY | $20,000 |
| ST LOUIS PUBLIC LIBRARY | $12,500 |
| CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM | $10,000 |
| FEED MY PEOPLE | $10,000 |
| ROSATI KAIN ACADEMY | $10,000 |
| COCA | $10,000 |
| MASS AUDUBON | $5,000 |
| WE POWER | $5,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $761k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% 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 +33% since the first grant, against -1% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 8 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $67k 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
- ADARCHCITY DEFENDERS3× · 2019–2024 · $313k · revenue +198%
- SLST LOUIS SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL5× · 2019–2024 · $221k · revenue +54%
- FMFLANCE MANAGEMENT INC D/B/A FLANCE EARLY LEARNING CENTER5× · 2020–2024 · $160k · revenue +70%
Funded once
- USURBAN SPROUTS CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTERone grant, 2023 · $425k · revenue -22%
- SESOUTHSIDE EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTERone grant, 2019 · $140k · revenue -28%
- CCCAPE COD MODERN HOUSE TRUSTgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $50k · revenue +104%
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.
Mission: st. louis empowers individuals for social and economic growth through relationships and opportunity.
To promote the possibilities of charitable giving, helping charitable citizens understand how they can effectively provide for the community they love and the causes they care deeply about.
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
Economic development.
Arts Midwest works collaboratively with private and public arts supporters to support, inform, and celebrate arts organizations and creative communities across the Midwest. Our mission is to build unprecedented opportunity across the…
Greater st. louis, inc. brings together business and civic leaders to create jobs, drive inclusive economic growth, and increase the st. louis metro area's global competitiveness. we speak with a unified voice, lead with a bold agenda, and…
See schedule o.the greater st. louis arts and education council (the arts and education council or the council) was the st. louis region's only united arts fund that pooled together donations from individuals, foundations and corporations…
The mission of st. louis voices academy of media arts is to leverage media arts and storytelling to equip students with the agency to excel academically, author their own futures, and make meaningful contributions in their communities.
Arts+ teaches music and art to students of all socioeconomic backgrounds, offering financial assistance, scholarship and free outreach programs to honor its founding mission to make high-quality arts instruction available to all.
The saint louis zoo association was established to support and enhance the saint louis zoo by providing facilities, funds, and advice. the association provides direct financial support to the zoo for renovations, new facilities, programs,…
As the leading public catalyst for arts and culture in st. louis, the regional arts commission leverages the power of creativity to strengthen and enrich our community.
To inspire and engage through the beauty, power and passion of dance
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Southside Early Childhood Center and the most unlike its peers is Dierberg Educational Foundation Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 22 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
51 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. 51 of the 108 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 URBAN SPROUTS CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTER ↗
- Who funds ARCHCITY DEFENDERS ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL ↗
- Who funds FLANCE MANAGEMENT INC D/B/A FLANCE EARLY LEARNING CENTER ↗
- Who funds SOUTHSIDE EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTER ↗
- Who funds WEPOWER ↗
- Who funds FINE ARTS WORK CENTER IN PROVINCETOWN INC ↗
- Who funds CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds THE LAUNCHCODE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAPE COD MODERN HOUSE TRUST ↗
- Who funds VIA ART FUND INC ↗
- Who funds LAUMEIER SCULPTURE PARK ↗
- Who funds Forest Park Forever Inc ↗
- Who funds MEDS & FOOD FOR KIDS ↗
- Who funds CASA OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds LIFT FOR LIFE ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS DANCE THEATRE ↗
- Who funds JAZZ ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds Building Futures Inc ↗
- Who funds KIDS WIN MISSOURI ↗
- Who funds SAINT LOUIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds FEED MY PEOPLE ↗
- Who funds Rosati-Kain Academy ↗
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: St Louis Community Foundation Inc · Trio Foundation of St Louis · The Kranzberg Family Charitable Foundation · St Louis Community Foundation · Regional Cultural and Performing Arts Development Commission · Commerce Bancshares Foundation · World Wide Technology Foundation · United Way of Greater St Louis Inc · Pershing Charitable Trust · Edward Jones Foundation · Washington University · Moneta Group Charitable 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 John and Alison Ferring Family 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.
- Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Inc — 27% of income from government
- Epilepsy Foundation of America — 22% 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.