· Private foundation
The Ward 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 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.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k11 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k12 grants · $205k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UPLIFT EDUCATION | $50,000 |
| NORTH TEXAS FOOD BANK | $30,000 |
| UT SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTER | $30,000 |
| WOODALL RODGERS PARK FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| BELTON EDUCATION ENRICHMENT FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| SAMARITANS PURSE | $15,000 |
| THE BOOT CAMPAIGN INC | $10,000 |
| THE MAGIC YARD PROJECT | $10,000 |
| JUNE SHELTON SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| ALSACST JUDE'S CHILDREN RES | $10,000 |
| DALLAS ARCHITECTURE FORUM | $10,000 |
| SEMPER FI & AMERICA'S FUND | $5,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS FOUNDATION-MD ANDERSON | $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 (FY17–23, $40k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 63% 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 +62% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2024, 9 since wound down; 7 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, 60% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $115k 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
- CHChildren's Hospital Corporation5× · 2017–2022 · $205k · revenue +69%
- NTNORTH TEXAS FOOD BANK7× · 2017–2024 · $191k · revenue +105%
- WRWoodall Rodgers Park Foundation7× · 2017–2024 · $120k · revenue +151%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $30k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $25k
- KCKERSHAW'S CHALLENGEone grant, 2022 · $15k · revenue -11%
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.
The mission of the Dallas-Fort Worth Hospital Council is to drive evidence-based improvement in patient care and health equity throughout the region.
To improve the care and well being of our community, nationally and internationally, through innovative clinically relevant research that is consistent with the mission, vision and values of Baylor Scott & White Health (BSWH).
The mission of texas trees foundation is to improve the health of cities and people through the transformative power of trees.
To provide financial support and programs for fallen officer families. To raise awareness and advocate for national issues impacting officers.
The mission of the texas wounded warrior foundation is to raise awareness, to honor, and to empower our wounded united state military warriors, enabling them to assimilate back to daily life upon their return from combat. we seek to…
The mission of the dallas va research corporation is to support scientific research, education, and rehabilitation to improve the lives of veterans and their families.
To engage and educate communities to prevent sexual violence and to support survivors and their loved ones as they heal and thrive.
To lead and serve in the moments that matter the most for the people of dallas.
Wheelchairs for warriors designs, builds, and delivers custom-fit, complex-rehab mobility solutions to veterans and first responders injured in the line of duty
With more than 1 million patient visits each year, Children's Health is North Texas' leading pediatric health system and among the largest in the nation. For more than a century, our mission has been clear: make life better for children.…
Sof is called to empower warriors to find purpose, be resilient, and live well. we develop and provide customized treatment plans for veterans through our national network of partners.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Dallas Museum of Art and the most unlike its peers is Dpas Assist the Officer Foundation. 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 22 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 26% 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 15% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 67 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 Children's Hospital Corporation ↗
- Who funds NORTH TEXAS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds Woodall Rodgers Park Foundation ↗
- Who funds Baylor Health Care System ↗
- Who funds DALLAS ARCHITECTURE FORUM ↗
- Who funds UPLIFT EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds FRONTLINE HEALING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SEMPER FI & AMERICA'S FUND ↗
- Who funds KERSHAW'S CHALLENGE ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds Adaptive Training Foundation ↗
- Who funds CARRY THE LOAD ↗
- Who funds The Magic Yarn Project ↗
- Who funds ELLEN NOEL ART MUSEUM OF THE PERMIAN BASIN ↗
- Who funds AMERICA'S WARRIOR PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds THE BOOT CAMPAIGN INC ↗
- Who funds THE ARKANSAS CENTER FOR INDEPENDENCE ↗
- Who funds Dallas Museum of Art ↗
- Who funds REBUILDING WARRIORS ↗
- Who funds VETERAN OUTDOORS INC ↗
- Who funds MIGHTY OAKS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds 22KILL ↗
- Who funds Beyond The Burn Foundation ↗
- Who funds FOLDS OF HONOR FOUNDATION ↗
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: Communities Foundation of Texas Inc · The Dallas Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · Chive Charities · Gil and Dody Weaver Foundation · Dallas Jewish Community Foundation · Veterans United Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · National Philanthropic Trust · Enterprise Holdings 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 Ward 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.
- Children's Hospital Corporation — 10% 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 Ward Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Ward Family 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.