· Public charity
The Kansas City Royals Foundation
THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS FOUNDATION uses the power of sport to improve the lives of kansas citians by supporting literacy and education efforts, promoting healthy and active communities, uplifting our military and veterans, and more.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 83 grants below total $2,374,355 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $3,134,226 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $759,871 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 $10k8 grants · $57k
- $10k–50k63 grants · $1.1M
- $50k–250k12 grants · $1.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL MUSEUM | $242,225 |
| SCHOOLSMART KC | $167,813 |
| KANSAS CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $116,000 |
| KCPS EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $110,050 |
| MO CHARTER PUBLIC SCHOOL ASSOC | $110,000 |
| DOWNTOWN KC CIVIC VENTURES | $100,000 |
| CITY YEAR | $100,000 |
| LEAD TO READ KC | $50,000 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS KANSAS CITY | $50,000 |
| TURN THE PAGE KC | $50,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF GKC | $50,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER KANSAS CITY | $50,000 |
| 2020 LEADERSHIP | $46,250 |
| PLAYERS PHILANTHROPY FUND | $45,000 |
| TEACH FOR AMERICA - KANSAS CITY | $40,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 79% 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 +46% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
89 repeat relationships — 47 still active in FY2024, 42 since wound down; 30 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, 76% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $563k 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
- NLNEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL MUSEUM INC4× · 2020–2024 · $590k · revenue +243%
- TKThe Kansas University Endowment Association7× · 2017–2024 · $520k · revenue +93%
- HTHARVESTERS - THE COMMUNITY FOOD NETWORK7× · 2017–2024 · $391k · revenue +40%
Funded once
- PFPATHWAY FINANCIAL EDUCATIONone grant, 2021 · $150k · revenue +2% · 25% of their budget
- UAUPLIFTING ATHLETES INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $70k · revenue +40%
- WCWYANDOTTE COUNTY SPORTS ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2021 · $50k
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 protect and promote the well-being of children by providing ongoing support of the charitable mission of the kansas children's service league.
Kansas legal services is devoted to helping low income kansans meet their basic needs through the provision of important legal and mediation services.
Bike share kc provides the greater kansas city area with a bike share system designed for transportation, recreation, and exercise.
Offer hope to build a better tomorrow through mental health services.
Grow food, farms and community in support of a sustainable, healthy and local food system.
The kansas children's discovery center enhances the lives of children and enriches the communities it serves.
Helping people move to a better life through hope-filled care, services, and advocacy; calling all those of goodwill to join us
Leading the way to the best kc region by convening innovative leaders, collaborating with like-minded organizations, advocating for positive change, and helping small businesses grow.
To bring glory to god by providing children with an excellent christ- centered education rooted in the word of god.
Engaging and aligning providers and stakeholders to establish Kansas as a role model for health care quality and a top performer in health care outcomes.
Our mission is to create an environment where all citizens can live safely and have access to real opportunities.
Kids Win Missouri furthers child well-being by advancing the health, education, safety and development of Missouri children and their families, especially those who are at-risk because of poverty, abuse, neglect, racial inequities or other…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Big Brothers Big Sisters Kansas City and the most unlike its peers is Zen Donkey Experience. 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 29 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.5% 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.
175 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. 175 of the 208 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 NEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds The Kansas University Endowment Association ↗
- Who funds HARVESTERS - THE COMMUNITY FOOD NETWORK ↗
- Who funds FISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NOAH'S BANDAGE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds ASSOCIATION OF MISSOURI CHARTER SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds CITY YEAR INC ↗
- Who funds KANSAS CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS EDUCATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BOYS CLUB OF GREATER KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN KANSAS CITY CIVIC VENTURES ↗
- Who funds Teach for America Inc ↗
- Who funds SCHOOL SMART KC INC ↗
- Who funds VARIETY OF GREATER KANSAS CITY TENT 8 ↗
- Who funds TURN THE PAGE KC INC ↗
- Who funds LEAD TO READ INC ↗
- Who funds OPERATION BREAKTHROUGH INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT JOBS KC INC ↗
- Who funds PATHWAY FINANCIAL EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds ALEXS LEMONADE STAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Big Brothers Big Sisters Kansas City ↗
- Who funds PLAYERS PHILANTHROPY FUND INC ↗
- Who funds The Children's Mercy Hospital ↗
- Who funds Community Services League of Jackson County ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF MIDDLE AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds KANSAS CITY METROPOLITAN CRIME COMMISSION ↗
- Who funds THE EDUCATOR ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds MO KAN 2020 VISION INC ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB YOUTH CAMP ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BRADENS HOPE FOR CHILDHOOD CANCER INC ↗
- Who funds RECONCILIATION SERVICES ↗
- Who funds The Battle Within Inc ↗
- Who funds Ronald McDonald House Charities of Kansas City Inc ↗
- Who funds AdventHealth Kansas City Foundation ↗
- Who funds LITERACY KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds THE DREAM FACTORY INC - HEADQUARTERS ↗
- Who funds HOPE HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds GIVING THE BASICS 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: United Way of Greater Kansas City Inc · Greater Kansas City Community Foundation · Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation · Health Forward Foundation · Oppenstein Brothers Foundation · R a Long Foundation 600 Plaza West Bldg · The Sherman Family Foundation · The H & R Block Foundation · The Sunderland Foundation · William T Kemper Foundation Commerce Bank Trustee · Jackson County Community Children's Services Fund · Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City
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 Kansas City Royals 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Kansas City Royals Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Kansas City Royals 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.