· Private foundation
The Joy 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.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k6 grants · $33k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $108k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DEMOCRACY FORWARD FOUNDATION | $23,000 |
| PARTNERSHIP WITH NATIVE AMERICANS | $20,000 |
| PROTECT DEMOCRACY PROJECT | $20,000 |
| BOULDER FOOD RESCUE | $20,000 |
| OURAY FOOD PANTRY | $12,500 |
| MAINE NEEDS | $12,000 |
| GIVE DIRECTLY INC | $7,500 |
| CAMFED USA FOUNDATION | $7,500 |
| SISTER CARMEN COMMUNITY CENTER INC | $5,000 |
| FREEDOM OF THE PRESS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| COMMUNITY PARTNERS FOR THE CIVICS CENTER | $5,000 |
| THE TRUST FOR LAND RESTORATION INC | $2,500 |
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 (FY24–25, $55k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 78% 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 38% of The Joy Fund’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.
8 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 8 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 23% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $108k 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
- CICERES INC3× · 2021–2023 · $30k · revenue -8%
- EFECDYSIS FOUNDATION2× · 2022–2024 · $25k · revenue -25%
- TFTIDES FOUNDATIONMOVEMENT VOTER PROJECT2× · 2021–2023 · $20k
Funded once
- DUDENVER URBAN GARDENSone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue 0%
- DADRYLANDS AGROECOLOGY RESEARCHone grant, 2024 · $10k
- CACLEAN AND PROSPEROUS AMERICA FUNDone grant, 2024 · $8k
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.
To offer the dignity of fair employment to people living in impoverished communities, who become transformational agents of global forest restoration.
To establish and promote programs to protect the global climate, forests, wildlife and the natural environment, through research, advocacy, and investigation.
Development in Gardening is improving the nutrition and livelihoods of some of the world's most uniquely marginalized people by teaching them to plant regenerative gardens that grow health, wealth, and a sense of belonging.
The organization's mission is to conserve and promote new england's native plants to ensure healthy, biologically diverse landscapes.
Environment next supports individuals, nonprofits and businesses around the world on solutions to complex climate issues. we provide leadership, outreach and communication support, grants, and investments to empower leaders and their ideas…
The Boulder Watershed Collective is a 501c3 non-profit stakeholder-driven organization established to address forested watershed health,resiliency and stewardship. We have three program areas: ClimateAdaptation and Resilience Watershed…
Grist is an independent, non profit media organization dedicated to reporting on climate change.
To research and develop healthy climate solutions comprising global food security, ecosystem regeneration and carbon balance in seas and soils.
Improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions through open data and tools.
To partner with individuals and organizations to access, organize, and share data that inspires action that restores our environment.
Foundation for food and agriculture research connects funders, researchers and farmers through public-private partnerships to support audacious research addressing the biggest food and agriculture challenges.
Wri is committed to creating change that improves people's lives and ensures the natural world can thrive. (see schedule o)wri's bold vision requires a formula for success we call "count it. change it. scale it.":- count it: our work is…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is As You Sow and the most unlike its peers is Moab Valley Multicultural Center. 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 25 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
23 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. 23 of the 32 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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION BOULDER COUNTY ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL GREENGRANTS FUND ↗
- Who funds CERES INC ↗
- Who funds ECDYSIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DEMOCRACY FORWARD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PROTECT DEMOCRACY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds Partnership With Native Americans ↗
- Who funds BOULDER FOOD RESCUE ↗
- Who funds GIVEDIRECTLY INC ↗
- Who funds CAMFED USA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Maine Needs Inc ↗
- Who funds DENVER URBAN GARDENS ↗
- Who funds MOAB VALLEY MULTICULTURAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds SAVORY INSTITUTEORG INC ↗
- Who funds The Land Institute ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDSHIP BRIDGE ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM OF THE PRESS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SISTER CARMEN COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Slow Money Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds CONSERVATION COLORADO EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds THE TRUST FOR LAND RESTORATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE VENTURE OUT PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds AS YOU SOW ↗
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: Community Foundation Boulder County · Patagoniaorg · The Denver Foundation · Colorado Gives Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Network for Good · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Joy Fund 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.
- Ceres 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.