· Private foundation
The Sunflower Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| University Academy | $5,000 |
| The Learning Club of Kansas City | $5,000 |
| Catholic Charities | $5,000 |
| Urban Ranger Corps | $3,000 |
| Children's Hospital of Philadelphia | $2,500 |
| Rose Brooks Center Inc | $2,000 |
| Cross Lines | $2,000 |
| Camps for Kids | $2,000 |
| Boys and Girls Clubs | $2,000 |
| Step Forward | $1,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| City Union Mission Administration | $1,000 |
| Developing Potential Inc | $1,000 |
| Harvesters | $1,000 |
| KC Healthy Kids | $1,000 |
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, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 67% 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 8% of The Sunflower 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. Read by recipient address, 25% of the giving stays in KS; read by stated purpose it is 18% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
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 +57% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
32 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 2 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $200 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
- UAUNIVERSITY ACADEMY8× · 2017–2024 · $42k · revenue +57%
- TCTHE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA7× · 2017–2024 · $20k · revenue +88%
- RBROSE BROOKS CENTER INC8× · 2017–2024 · $15k · revenue +84%
Funded once
- MHMayfield High SSchool GHSE Projectone grant, 2018 · $6k
- DHDOUBLE HARVEST INCone grant, 2022 · $4k · revenue -100%
JEWISH RELIEF AGENCYone grant, 2021 · $2k · revenue -1%
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.
Children's services
`to create a culture that values parenting and keeping children safe through education, respect, advocacy, and strengthening families.
Advocacy for abused children
Children At Risk (C@R) is a statewide nonprofit organization whose mission is to serve as a catalyst for change to improve the quality of life for children through strategic research, public policy analysis, education, collaboration, and…
To provide educational and therapeutic services, at a professional level, for infants, toddlers and preschool children up to 12 years and their families through supporting the family unit and working with each child to develop his or her…
Kids first gives children a voice in divorce, custody, and other conflicts by providing focused legal representation and services for kids.
Vision: a world where no child's life is torn apart by war.children in conflict works tirelessly to restore hope, safety and childhoods to children whose lives are affected by war.
Family & children services strengthens the safety and well being of children, individuals and families; accomplished by providing a comprehensive program of critical human services.
Kingdom advisors is a discipleship ministry serving christian financial professionals. the organization encourages, educates, and empowers christian financial professionals with biblical wisdom to be effective disciples of jesus christ in…
Helping people move to a better life through hope-filled care, services, and advocacy; calling all those of goodwill to join us
To help kids and families heal the emotional scars of childhood cancer and learn to thrive.
We are the premier childrens mental health agency that reduces the suffering experienced by children who have emotional problems related to depression, anxiety, and behavior like adhd. untreated, these problems can lead to failure in…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Safehome Inc and the most unlike its peers is Double Harvest 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 42 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.
22 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. 22 of the 47 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 UNIVERSITY ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds ROSE BROOKS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HAVERFORD SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Benchmark School ↗
- Who funds CAMPS FOR KIDS ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN RANGER CORPS ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds HARVESTERS - THE COMMUNITY FOOD NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Developing Potential Inc ↗
- Who funds SAFEHOME INC ↗
- Who funds LA CASA INC ↗
- Who funds MATTHEW RENK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DOUBLE HARVEST INC ↗
- Who funds MIGHTY WRITERS ↗
- Who funds KC Healthy Kids ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH RELIEF AGENCY ↗
- Who funds MUSIC WILL INC ↗
- Who funds Dr James Dobson Family Institute ↗
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: Greater Kansas City Community Foundation · The H & R Block Foundation · Oppenstein Brothers Foundation · Menorah Heritage Foundation · John J Sullivan Jr Foundation John Houlehan & Mark Henke-Trustees · Jackson County Community Children's Services Fund · The Francis Family Foundation · United Way of Greater Kansas City Inc · The Sunderland Foundation · Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation · Servant Foundation · Natl Christian Charitable Fdn Inc
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 Sunflower 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.
- 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.