· Private foundation
Vess 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 $10k6 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $227k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
- $250k+1 grant · $310k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| True the Vote | $310,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| Wichita Children's Home | $30,000 |
| Catholic Charities Inc | $20,000 |
| Center of Hope Inc | $20,000 |
| Cambodian Children's Fund | $20,000 |
| St Jude Children's Research Hospital | $16,000 |
| Tom's Door | $16,000 |
| Samaritan's Purse | $15,000 |
| Guadalupe Clinic | $15,000 |
| TOP Early Learning Center | $12,500 |
| Tunnel to Towers | $12,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Kansans for Life | $10,000 |
| Childrens First CEO Kansas Inc | $10,000 |
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, $708k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 69% 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 +50% since the first grant, against +33% for the ones you funded once.
33 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2024, 12 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k 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
- TTTRUE THE VOTE INC3× · 2022–2024 · $710k · revenue +26%
- KHKVC HEALTH SYSTEMS INC3× · 2019–2022 · $440k · revenue +223%
- TWTHE WICHITA CHILDREN'S HOME8× · 2017–2024 · $238k · revenue +99%
Funded once
- WFWICHITA FAMILY CRISIS CENTERone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue -16%
- L4LEAGUE 42 FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $75k · revenue -39%
- CFCENTER FOR COMBATING HUMAN TRAFFICKINGone grant, 2023 · $40k
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.
Helping people move to a better life through hope-filled care, services, and advocacy; calling all those of goodwill to join us
To provide christ-centered programs and services that lead the homeless toward self-sufficiency.
Wichita's littlest heroes (wlh) exists to provide hope, help, and happiness to families of children ages 0-18 in the kansas area who are battling life-threatening medical conditions. wlh strives to accomplish this be being a physical and…
At wichita habitat for humanity, we believe everyone deserves the strength, stability, and independence that comes with a safe, affordable home. we partner with hardworking individuals and families in our community, empowering them to…
To provide shelter and advocacy services to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking in the 11 counties of southeast kansas.
To break the cycle of domestic violence and partner abuse for victims and their children by providing shelter, advocacy, counseling and prevention education in our community.
To support, assist and promote the interests and welfare of the programs and activities of the catholic diocese of wichita which provide health care services and health education to poor, distressed and underprivileged individuals.
House of Hope Kansas City is unique, because we work with teens and their parents to find solutions and ultimately, restoration of healthy family relationships. We serve families in crisis with our program for residents to experience the…
The Welcome House is a non-profit, sober living, recovery program (incorporated in 1971) with the sole purpose of educating and rehabilitating the adult male alcoholic/ addict and the expressed mission of returning the individual to…
Hunter health (the center) operates three healthcare centers in wichita, ks. the center provides a broad range of health services to a largely medically underserved population. the us dept. of health and human services (dhhs) and indian…
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.
Crisis center of west texas' mission is to respond, shelter, and educate to end domestic and sexual violence in west texas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Catholic Charities Inc and the most unlike its peers is Samaritan's Purse. 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 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 7% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 43 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 TRUE THE VOTE INC ↗
- Who funds KVC HEALTH SYSTEMS INC ↗
- Who funds THE WICHITA CHILDREN'S HOME ↗
- Who funds WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS FOR AMERICA ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT USA INC ↗
- Who funds Center of Hope Inc ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds TOM'S DOOR INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds WICHITA FAMILY CRISIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds Cambodian Childrens Fund ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE 42 FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN FIRST CEO KANSAS INC ↗
- Who funds RAINBOWS UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds THIRD OPTION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COMBATING HUMAN TRAFFICKING ↗
- Who funds KANSAS BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS INC ↗
- Who funds HUMANKIND MINISTRIES WICHITA INC ↗
- Who funds Kansans For Life Inc ↗
- Who funds Guadalupe Clinic Inc ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Helping a HeroOrg ↗
- Who funds ICT FOOD RESCUE INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S TUMOR 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: Wichita Foundation · Goebel Family-Star Lumber Charitable Trust · Textron Charitable Trust Dtd 122353 · Daniel J Taylor Family Charitable Foundation · United Way of the Plains Inc · Dwane L and Velma Lunt Wallace Charitable Foundation · Ima Foundation · Mann Family Foundation · Belin Foundation · The Fidelity Bank Foundation · Bruce G Cochener Foundation · Berry Foundation 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 Vess 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.
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.