How much does Townsend Family Foundation give?

Townsend Family Foundation reported 6 grants totaling $264,199 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 7 and 15 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

What does Townsend Family Foundation fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Education (48%), Arts & Culture (28%), Public Benefit (12%).

Who are Townsend Family Foundation's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: University of Chicago ($972k), The Joffrey Ballet ($270k), Cato Institute ($245k).

Does Townsend Family Foundation fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 10% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Townsend Family Foundation accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and does not take unsolicited requests. Check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

Which funders back the same organizations as Townsend Family Foundation?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, Amazonsmile Foundation.

Where is Townsend Family Foundation based?

Townsend Family Foundation is based in CO.

Townsend Family Foundation

Townsend Family Foundation at a glance

· Private foundation

Townsend Family Foundation

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.

$264k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$141k

Largest

01What it funds

01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Education$998kArts & Culture$573kPublic Benefit$245kCrime & Legal$217kRecreation & Sports$28kHealth$4kHousing & Shelter$2kHuman Services$2kOther$0

02FY2025 · 6 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k1 grant · $200
$10k–50k4 grants · $123k
$50k–250k1 grant · $141k

$25,000

Median grant

States reached

$3.3M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO	$140,599
CATO INSTITUTE	$48,400
INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE	$25,000
THE JOFFREY BALLET	$25,000
THE SEAQUIST HOUSE FOUNDATION	$25,000
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO	$200

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY20–20, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

99%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$2.0M · 22 repeat orgs$19k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +76% since the first grant, against +22% for those funded once.

22 repeat relationships: 5 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$2.0M

$19k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+76%

+22%

Still filing today

73%

67%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Arts & CultureRecreation & SportsHuman ServicesEducationPublic BenefitCivil RightsOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

University of Chicago
8× · 2017–2025 · $972k · revenue +56%
TJ
THE JOFFREY BALLET
9× · 2017–2025 · $270k · revenue +90%
CI
CATO INSTITUTE
9× · 2017–2025 · $245k · revenue +70%

Funded once

BM
Bella Mente Quantum Racing Association
one grant, 2020 · $13k · revenue -67%
PP
PETERS PRAIRIE SCHOOL COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION
one grant, 2023 · $2k
OF
ONE FAMILY ILLINOIS
one grant, 2020 · $2k · revenue +22%

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.

Education

Boston Architectural College

The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.

—

Museum of Arts and Design

To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.

Arts & Culture

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)

Arts & Culture

The Pierpont Morgan Library

The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.

Education

United States Naval Institute

Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.

—

Museum of American Finance

Finance impacts everyone. as a socially relevant organization, the museum of american finance seeks to improve understanding of the influence of financial institutions and capital markets on the u.s. and global economies, and on…

—

Rhode Island School of Design

The mission of rhode island school of design, through its college and museum,is to educate its students and the public in the creation and (see schedule o)appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to…

Education

Columbia College Chicago

The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.

Education

The Jewish Museum

The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.

Arts & Culture

Marine Biological Laboratory

The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…

Science & Tech

Chicago Historical Society

The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…

Arts & Culture

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Aspen Art Museum; the most unlike its peers is Bella Mente Quantum Racing Association. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

21 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 21 of the 29 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

21/21

Grantees still filing

16/21

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Education$972,799Arts & Culture$533,672Public Benefit$245,200Civil Rights$215,000Other$72,167Recreation & Sports$25,166Human Services$3,667Health$760

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Donor Advised Charitable Giving IncCO5.6× affinity6 shared granteesties to 2 of 2Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Townsend Family Foundation funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Townsend Family Foundation. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

1report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–15%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

Play a game based on Townsend Family’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home