· Private foundation
Watson Family Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2018–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| KC METROPOLITAN CRIME COMMISSION | $1,600 |
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 (FY21–22, $4k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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 +51% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
54 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2024, 53 since wound down.
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; $0 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
- TATHE ALS ASSOCIATION MID-AMERICA CHAPTER2× · 2018–2020 · $8k · revenue +10%
- WHWelcome House Inc2× · 2018–2020 · $5k · revenue +266%
- KGKANSAS GOLF FOUNDATION4× · 2018–2022 · $4k · revenue +158%
Funded once
- GFGOLF FOUNDATION OF KANSAS CITYone grant, 2018 · $25k · revenue +93%
- CMChildren's Mercy Hospital Resource Development Officeone grant, 2020 · $5k
- HTHEARTLAND THERAPEUTIC RIDING INCone grant, 2022 · $3k · revenue +4%
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 kansas city country club is a traditional, private, family-oriented country club dedicated to providing outstanding year-round dining, social and athletic activities to its members and their guests through superior services, staff and…
The mission of ronald mcdonald house charities of kansas city is to provide essential services that remove barriers, strengthen families, and promote healing when children need healthcare.
Helping people move to a better life through hope-filled care, services, and advocacy; calling all those of goodwill to join us
Health care services for the people of western nebraska and eastern wyoming.
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
The mission of kc care health center is to promote health and wellness by providing quality care, access, research and education to the underserved and all people in our community.
The research foundation invests in health-centered programs and partnerships that benefit health care students and professionals, patients, and people in the kansas city community.
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.
The organization provides medical care to improve, maintain, and restore the health of the people in the communities we serve.
To protect and promote the well-being of children by providing ongoing support of the charitable mission of the kansas children's service league.
The mission of healthcore clinic, inc is to provide quality family healthcare through improved access and a heightened and unrelenting focus on education and prevention.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Missouri and Kansas and the most unlike its peers is American Diabetes Association. 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 40 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 — 3% 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.
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 71 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 GOLF FOUNDATION OF KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds THE ALS ASSOCIATION MID-AMERICA CHAPTER ↗
- Who funds Welcome House Inc ↗
- Who funds KANSAS GOLF FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND THERAPEUTIC RIDING INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD PROTECTION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE FRANCIS OUIMET SCHOLARSHIP FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CROSSROADS HOSPICE CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Children's Mercy Hospital ↗
- Who funds Nicklaus Children's Health Care Foundation ↗
- Who funds BLUE VALLEY EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF MISSOURI AND KANSAS ↗
- Who funds STARLIGHT THEATRE ASSOCIATION OF KANSAS CITY INC ↗
- Who funds MARINE TOYS FOR TOTS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN ORGANIZATION COUNTERING SEXUAL ASSAULT ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds ROSE BROOKS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds City Union Mission ↗
- Who funds SHELTER KC ↗
- Who funds AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS ASSN ↗
- Who funds TRUMAN MEDICAL CENTER INCORPORATED ↗
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 Sunderland Foundation · The Morgan Family Foundation · The Sherman Family Foundation · The Curry Family Foundation · Constance M Cooper Charitable Foundation · Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation · Oppenstein Brothers Foundation · The Francis Family Foundation · William T Kemper Foundation Commerce Bank Trustee · United Way of Greater Kansas City Inc · Hickok Family Foundation F/K/A John D Hickok 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 Watson 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Watson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Watson 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.