Colorado · Nonprofit
SPROUT CITY FARMS
SPROUT CITY FARMS (Colorado) receives grants from 23 organizations whose IRS filings report $1,280,334 to it, the largest being THE DENVER FOUNDATION ($297,250). 12 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 52% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2024
- $950k
- Funders on record
- 23
- Grants received
- $1.3M
- Net assets
- $528k
What Sprout City Farms does
Mission
Sprout City Farms collaborates with communities to pursue food justice by cultivating innovative, restorative, and educational farms. Sprout City Farms envisions a thriving and equitable food system supported by a network of farms and partners that nourish, and are nourished by, our surrounding communities.
As stated on its FY2024 Form 990.
Programs
Food access: remove finanical barriers to healthy eating therefore increasing food security. - 55% of produce grown is allocated to food relief programs serving those most in need. - community farm stands operate by donation, providing equal access to fresh produce, and accept and double snap/ebt benefits. - community supported agriculture (csa) supports our farms, as well as the surrounding community, by offering snap/ebt, wic, and solidarity shares (50% of members) in addition to traditional paid csa shares. - farm fresh food shared with the school lunch program reaches a population where over 70% of students qualify for a free or reduced lunch.
$603,469 spent$88,950 earned by the program74% of program spendingCommunity and thought leadership: build reciprocal, inclusive relationships that support community engagement and community-centered food systems. - increase community outreach to build strong partnerships that support scf work and the community. - scf has participated in and advised various urban agriculture activities including colorado state university's building urban farmers class, front range beginning farmers conference, colorado fruit and vegetable growers association conference, mile high farmers and the annual producers summit, rocky mountain farmers union, national young farmers coalition, southwest food coalition, denver sustainable food policy council, jefferson county food policy council, and other conferences and events.
$47,127 spent6% of program spendingEducation: instill skills, knowledge and values regarding food, health, and environmental stewardship through hands-on learning. - the scf apprenticeship/internship program provides job training to 8-10 aspiring urban farmers annually. - workshops and classes cover a variety of topics related to growing and preparing food. - farm to school at dgs includes curriculum-approved programs for 550 diverse kindergarten - 8th grade students. - farm field trips, classroom visits, and other youth programs offer valuable and unique educational opportunities to 1,000+ students throughout the denver area at denver green school and mountair park community farms.
$166,956 spent$112,899 earned by the program20% of program spending
The 3 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $817,552.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2021 to 2022, from $353k to $688k (+95%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2018 2% · 2019 2% · 2020 15% · 2021 26% · 2022 39% · 2023 40% · 2024 69%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
79% of SPROUT CITY FARMS’s revenue is contributions — about as donation-reliant as the typical peer (94% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 3 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 4 funders to 7 funders, grant income rose $63k → $357k.
7 of 23 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 52% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of SPROUT CITY FARMS’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
SPROUT CITY FARMS has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 23% of grant income, and it takes 4 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 4 funders to its left
71% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund SPROUT CITY FARMS.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 61% · 2018 26% · 2019 31% · 2020 23% · 2021 34% · 2022 39% · 2023 41% — diversifying over time.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
64% of SPROUT CITY FARMS's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 52% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
52% of SPROUT CITY FARMS's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Of the $615k that is directly attributable, 52% of it comes from funders outside Colorado, across 8 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $665k arriving through sponsors registered in 5 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
SPROUT CITY FARMS has grown faster than half of the 2,974 food & nutrition nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 2,974 food & nutrition nonprofits $100k–$1M, FY2024
Government funding SPROUT CITY FARMS receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $146k on record.
- Department of Agriculture$146k
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like SPROUT CITY FARMS
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Colorado
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
80% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
100%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for SPROUT CITY FARMS: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds SPROUT CITY FARMS?
- SPROUT CITY FARMS (Colorado) receives grants from 23 organizations whose IRS filings report $1,280,334 to it, the largest being THE DENVER FOUNDATION ($297,250). 12 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 52% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does SPROUT CITY FARMS have?
- IRS filings report 23 organizations giving $1,280,334 in grants to SPROUT CITY FARMS, 12 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of SPROUT CITY FARMS?
- THE DENVER FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $297,250 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like SPROUT CITY FARMS find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Colorado. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Sprout City Farms →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2024 (financials across 2017–2024), and the filings of 23 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing