Flannigan Family Foundation
Investing in people, organizations, and communities with the potential to create lasting impact.
Our family supports charitable organizations doing careful, effective work — mostly in the Kansas City area, and mostly where added resources let good people do more.
- Focus
- Opportunity, community, and high-impact organizations
- Where
- Kansas City metropolitan area
- Process
- A short request — no long application
Our Approach
The same principles we use everywhere else.
Strong people, clear goals, careful stewardship, and a long view. We look for organizations where added resources create leverage rather than just more activity.
We value leaders who know the communities they serve, measure what matters, and are building something that gets stronger over time.
Thoughtful
We aim to understand the organization, the people behind it, and the problem being addressed.
Practical
We favor clear plans, strong execution, and resources directed toward tangible impact.
Long-Term
We value organizations and relationships capable of creating durable results over time.
Why We Give
Someone invested in us first.
At different points, people gave our family their time, their trust, and opportunities we hadn't yet earned. That kind of investment changes what a person can build. We think philanthropy works the same way.
So we look for people doing difficult, worthwhile work — and especially for moments when more resources let a capable leader or organization do substantially more than they could otherwise. Giving, for us, is part gratitude, part responsibility, and mostly optimism about what good people can build when someone backs them.
What We Support
Our areas of focus
Our giving will change as our family learns. For now it sits in three areas where we think we can be useful.
Opportunity & Education
Supporting organizations that help people build skills, access opportunity, develop their potential, and create better futures for themselves and their families.
Examples can include
- Education
- Workforce development
- Career and technical training
- Youth development
- Leadership development
- Economic mobility
Stronger Communities
Supporting organizations addressing important needs in the communities where we live, work, and have meaningful relationships.
Examples can include
- Community development
- Basic needs
- Family support
- Housing and stability
- Local institutions
- Community-based initiatives
High-Impact Organizations
Supporting exceptional nonprofit leaders and organizations where additional capital can meaningfully accelerate impact.
We are particularly interested in
- Strong leadership
- Clear mission
- Measurable outcomes
- Responsible stewardship
- Scalable or durable programs
- Organizations at an important inflection point
What We Look For
What tends to catch our attention
Across all three areas, a few things come up again and again when we decide to get involved.
- Exceptional people
- Leaders whose judgment we'd trust with more than we're giving them.
- A clear problem
- Work that names what it is trying to fix.
- Practical solutions
- Plans that already function, not plans that require everything to go right.
- Visible progress
- Some honest way to tell whether the work is going well.
- Responsible stewardship
- Care with money, people, and the community's trust.
- Timing
- Points where an additional grant does more than the same amount would a year earlier or later.
These are preferences, not requirements. Strong organizations rarely check every box, and we'd rather hear from you than have you rule yourself out.
How We Give
Four steps, no long application.
Nonprofit leaders have better things to do than fill out forms. Nobody should have to write a proposal before we know whether there's a fit.
- 1
Introduce your organization
Send a short grant request through this website.
- 2
Initial review
We read about your mission, leadership, work, and how it lines up with our priorities.
- 3
Conversation
If there looks to be a fit, we'll ask a few questions or set up a conversation.
- 4
Decision
Selected organizations hear from us with next steps for the grant itself.
A grant request isn't a guarantee of funding, and we identify some organizations on our own rather than through this form.
Grant Eligibility
Could we be a fit?
Before requesting a grant, please review the criteria below. Meeting these criteria does not guarantee funding, but organizations that fall outside them are unlikely to be considered.
Generally Eligible
- Organization is recognized as a U.S. 501(c)(3) public charity or is otherwise eligible to receive charitable grants from a donor-advised fund.
- The proposed work has a clear charitable purpose.
- The organization or initiative aligns with at least one of our current focus areas.
- The organization can clearly explain how grant funds would be used.
- The organization demonstrates responsible leadership and financial stewardship.
- The organization can describe the people or communities it serves and the intended impact of its work.
- Geographic alignment with our current giving priorities: the Kansas City metropolitan area.
Generally Not Funded
- Grants directly to individuals
- Political candidates or political campaign organizations
- Activities whose primary purpose is lobbying or political advocacy prohibited for donor-advised-fund grants
- Organizations that cannot receive charitable grants through our sponsoring organization
- Requests primarily intended to provide a private benefit to donors, family members, or related parties
- Commercial or for-profit ventures
There may be exceptions or additional restrictions depending on the nature of a request and the requirements of our donor-advised fund sponsor.
Before You Write
Common questions
A few things worth knowing before you send a request.
- Do I need to submit a full proposal?
- No. A short request is all we ask for at this stage. If we need more, we'll tell you exactly what. Please don't build new materials for this step.
- What happens after I submit?
- We review it as a family. If there appears to be a fit, we follow up with questions or a conversation. We fund a small number of organizations, so if we don't reach out, it isn't a judgment on your work.
- Do you accept unsolicited grant requests?
- Yes. We also identify organizations on our own, so some grants begin without a request.
- Do you fund organizations outside Kansas City?
- Our current priority is the Kansas City metropolitan area. Work elsewhere is unlikely to be funded right now, though our priorities may change over time.
- What size grants do you make?
- We haven't set a fixed range. Grant size depends on the organization, the work, and where added resources would matter most, so it's more useful to tell us what you need than to guess at ours.
Request a Grant
Tell us about the work you're doing.
This is a short grant request, not a long application. Tell us enough to understand your organization, the problem you're working on, and where more resources would help. If there's alignment, we'll ask for more then — please don't build anything new for this step.
The best philanthropy begins with people doing meaningful work.
We look forward to learning from the organizations and leaders working every day to strengthen their communities.
Request a Grant