· Public charity
United Way of the Bluegrass Inc
United way of the bluegrass (uwbg) fights for the education, financial stability, health, and basic needs of every person in central kentucky for over 100 years.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 43 grants below total $664,007 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $768,070 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $104,063 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 · FY2025
- Under $10k15 grants · $115k
- $10k–50k26 grants · $422k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $127k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CENTRO DE SAN JUAN DIEGO | $77,000 |
| URBAN LEAGUE | $50,000 |
| YMCA OF CENTRAL KENTUCKY | $30,000 |
| ARBOR YOUTH SERVICES FORMERLY MASH | $29,000 |
| THE HEARING & SPEECH CENTER | $24,000 |
| GATHERING PLACE MISSION | $22,000 |
| CAPITAL CITY ACTIVITY CENTER | $20,500 |
| GREENHOUSE17 (FORMERLY BLUEGRASS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROGRAM) | $20,000 |
| SIMON HOUSE | $19,600 |
| HOPE CENTER INC | $19,000 |
| FAITH FEEDS OF KENTUCKY INC DBA GLEANKY | $18,900 |
| DOVES OF GATEWAY INC | $18,000 |
| THORN HILL EDUCATION CENTER | $17,500 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS BLUEGRASS CHAPTER | $16,000 |
| KENTUCKY EQUAL JUSTICE CENTER | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $3.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 99% 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.
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 +44% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
78 repeat relationships — 38 still active in FY2025, 40 since wound down; 5 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $42k 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
- ULURBAN LEAGUE OF LEXINGTON-FAYETTE COUNTY9× · 2017–2025 · $805k · revenue +13%
- YMYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER LEXINGTON KENTUCKY9× · 2017–2025 · $667k · revenue +38%
- YMYOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF PARIS BOURBON COUNTY INC8× · 2017–2024 · $476k · revenue +50%
Funded once
- UWUNITED WAY OF KENTUCKY INCone grant, 2022 · $189k · revenue -86%
- UWUNITED WAY REGIONAL CAMPAIGNone grant, 2022 · $28k
- TETHE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF LEXINGTONone grant, 2017 · $27k
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 advocate programs providing assistance to persons in low income environments to have adequate food, shelter, healthcare, education, water, waste and a sustainable home.
To provide families in western kentucky with education, advocacy and treatment that prevents child abuse, encourages family stability, promotes healthy relationships, enhances well-being and cultivates safe, nurturing families.
Children's advocacy centers of kentucky, inc. seeks to build relationships at the state and national levels by collaborating with partners which will benefit the work of kentucky child advocacy centers.
To increase access to the courts and high-quality legal representation for people with low and moderate incomes living in kentucky through innovative partnerships with the judiciary, the civil legal aid programs, private bar, law schools,…
CAReS provides case management and emergency assistance to Kentucky residents living in Boyd, Carter, and Greenup counties.Emergency assistance includes rent, utilities, medications, baby care items, and emergency food.
To eliminate barriers, achieve economic security and empower families by partnering with other service providers.
To reach and help women who struggle with alcohol and chemical dependency; to offer assistance and resources to women while going through the rehabilitation process; to provide a safe environment and shelter to homeless women; to provide…
To provide substance abuse prevention & treatment.
The Crisis Center of Russell County was organized to provide assistance and temporary housing to victims of domestic abuse through secured temporary housing and education with job placement to transition them back into society. In…
Provide a coordinated response to concerns of child abuse in a child-focused environment, offering prevention, evaluation and treatment to children and families.
The gentry house, inc. is an emergency transitional homeless shelter to help families with children in the region of murray and calloway county, ky. residents are given rent and utility assistance.
Effective prosecution of child abuses, providing therapy and education for the abused, and providing a safe haven for the abused.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center Inc D/B/a Ampersand Sexual Violence Resource and the most unlike its peers is Lawrence & Augusta Hager Educational Foundation Inc. 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 42 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
88 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. 88 of the 111 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 URBAN LEAGUE OF LEXINGTON-FAYETTE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER LEXINGTON KENTUCKY ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF PARIS BOURBON COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD CARE COUNCIL OF KENTUCKY INC ↗
- Who funds BLUE GRASS COMMUNITY ACTION PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds GREENHOUSE17 INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR WOMEN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF THE BLUEGRASS INC ↗
- Who funds LEXINGTON HEARING & SPEECH CENTER INC DBA THE HEARING & SPEECH CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BLUE GRASS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ARBOR YOUTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds THE HOPE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Ministerial Association of Woodford County Inc ↗
- Who funds NURSING HOME OMBUDSMAN AGENCY OF THE BLUEGRASS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRO DE SAN JUAN DIEGO FOUNDATION INC FKA DOUGLAS&BENNETT FAMILY FDN ↗
- Who funds CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTERS OF THE BLUEGRASS INC ↗
- Who funds GROWING TOGETHER PRESCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF KENTUCKY INC ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF KENTUCKY'S WILDERNESS ROAD COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds AMEN HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds JUBILEE JOBS OF LEXINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds OFFICE OF KENTUCKY LEGAL SERVICES PROGRAMS INC ↗
- Who funds BLUEGRASS COUNCIL OF THE BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds CLARK COUNTY COMMUNITY SERVICES IN ↗
- Who funds VISUALLY IMPARIED PRESCHOOL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds KENTUCKY RIVER FOOTHILLS DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds GLEAN KENTUCKY INC ↗
- Who funds BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA #204 BLUEGRASS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF LEXINGTON INC ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF THE BLUEGRASS INC ↗
- Who funds FRANKLIN COUNTY COUNCIL ON AGING INC ↗
- Who funds CONSUMER CREDIT COUNSELING SERVICES OF THE MIDWEST INC ↗
- Who funds SIMON HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds TELFORD COMMUNITY CENTER YMCA ↗
- Who funds AVOL KENTUCKY INC ↗
- Who funds CHRYSALIS HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds THORNHILL EDUCATION CENTER 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: Blue Grass Community Foundation Inc · Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels Inc · American Water Charitable Foundationinc · Roaring Brook Foundation Inc · The King's Daughters and Sons Foundation of Kentucky Inc · LG&E and Ku Foundation Inc · Keeneland Foundation Inc · The Whas Crusade for Children Inc · Nisource Charitable Foundation · The Community Foundation of Louisville Inc · Ee Murry Family Foundation · Heart of Kentucky United Way 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 United Way of the Bluegrass Inc 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.
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.