Kansas Oil Museum Inc.

Kansas Oil Museum Inc. (EIN 48-6120516, El Dorado, KS) is filed with the IRS as a private operating foundation, and every line of available evidence — ten years of Form 990-PF data plus its own website — confirms it functions exactly as that designation implies: it spends its income running its own charitable activity (the Kansas Oil Museum and Kansas Oil Hall of Fame) rather than making grants to outside nonprofits. Its three IRS-reported program areas are 'development of the Kansas Oil Museum and Hall of Fame' ($500), 'improve/maintain/expand exhibits and collections at the Society's primary location' ($215,424), and 'public education programs for grade/middle school outreach and adult group tours' ($1,849) — all self-directed operating expenses, not third-party grants. Grants-paid is recorded as $0 in every available fiscal year (2011-2023), and the platform's own grantee-matching found zero historical grantees and zero matched public opportunities. The museum's website has no grants page, no LOI process, and no application portal; its funding language is entirely donor- and member-facing ('the museum relies on the generosity of donors, members, and community supporters'). For a grant seeker, the practical takeaway is blunt: this entity should not be treated as a prospective funder. Organizations that discover it through a foundation database are almost certainly seeing 990-PF 'total giving' figures that reflect the museum's own program spending, not grants available to apply for. The only legitimate way to engage with Kansas Oil Museum Inc. is as a peer institution or potential collaborator — e.g., a Kansas history, energy-education, or STEM nonprofit proposing a joint exhibit, a shared education program, or a co-hosted community event — not as an applicant seeking a check. Anyone pursuing that kind of partnership should approach the museum's leadership (President Tim Myers as of the most recent filing; Treasurer Julie Clements) with a specific collaborative proposal rather than a generic funding request, since the organization has no infrastructure for evaluating unsolicited grant applications.

'Total giving' in the IRS data — $553,520 (FY2023), $448,376 (FY2022), $304,354 (FY2021), $274,521 (FY2020), $233,653 (FY2019), rising steadily from $196,901 in FY2011 — is a Form 990-PF line that, for an operating foundation, captures qualifying-distribution program spending, not third-party grant dollars. Grants_paid is literally $0 in every one of the ten years in the record, and the museum's own IRS program descriptions confirm the money goes to exhibits/collections ($215,424 of a recent year's spend), the museum/Hall of Fame itself ($500), and school outreach/tours ($1,849) — categories that only make sense as internal operating costs. Total assets have grown modestly from $2.75M (FY2011) to $3.56M (FY2023), and net investment income (ranging $54,964-$375,164 annually) plus contributions received ($29,181-$146,119 annually) fund that operating budget alongside the endowment draw. There is no median grant size, no grant range, no program-area breakdown by dollar, and no geographic distribution to report, because the organization has issued zero external grants in the years covered. Officer compensation has risen from $23,094 (2014) to $62,500 (2023), consistent with a small operating nonprofit professionalizing its staff over a decade, not with a grantmaking apparatus. In short: there is no funding pattern to analyze from a grant-seeker's perspective, because this fact pattern — 100% operating spend, 0% pass-through grants, across a full decade of filings — is definitive rather than ambiguous.

The five peer organizations surfaced by asset size (all ~$3.2-3.3M, same Arts & Culture NTEE bucket) are themselves small museums/historical societies, not larger foundations, which reinforces that Kansas Oil Museum Inc. was pulled into a foundation database primarily by asset size and NTEE code rather than by grantmaking behavior.

All six organizations sit within a tight $3.17M-$3.56M asset band, suggesting this peer set was generated by asset-size proximity rather than by comparable grantmaking activity — most of these peers likely share Kansas Oil Museum's operating-foundation structure (self-run historical sites/collections) rather than functioning as accessible funders. Grant seekers should independently verify each peer's actual grant-issuing status (starting with Stone House Foundation, the only one with a public website) before treating any of them as live prospects, and should not assume asset-band membership implies open applications.

The most concrete recent activity is programmatic, not grantmaking: beginning April 2026 the museum added a volunteer-led creative-arts gathering to its calendar, alongside expanded homeschool-student programming covering Kansas history and energy science, a weekly Saturday family drop-in activity, a month-long genealogy/local-history research challenge, and a hands-on geology/earth-science event for families. These are all public-facing programs the museum runs itself at its El Dorado, KS location, consistent with its identity as a private operating foundation. On the funding side, the one substantive recent item found is that the museum was itself a *recipient* (not issuer) of a Kansas Department of Commerce/Tourism matching Attraction Grant, which doubled donor contributions up to $80,000 to fund an 'Evolution of Energy' STEM exhibit wall, with the matching window closing December 31, 2024. No leadership changes, no new grant program announcements, and no large outbound grants were found in 2025-2026 news coverage. The organization's board — President Tim Myers, Vice President Jason Artz, Secretary Bayley Allemand, Treasurer Julie Clements, plus trustees including Richard King, Loren Jack, Travis Holcomb, Tamara Johnson, and Jr Hogoboom — appears stable across the two most recent filings represented in the data, with only minor officer-title rotation (e.g., Tim Myers moved from Vice President to President; Loren Jack moved from Trustee to President in an earlier cycle). For an organization of this size and type, the absence of grant-related news is itself the finding: nothing in the record suggests Kansas Oil Museum Inc. is moving toward, or has ever operated, a grants-to-others program.

There is no application process to advise on, because Kansas Oil Museum Inc. does not accept grant applications from outside organizations — it is a private operating foundation that spends its own funds on its own museum. Grant seekers who found this entity via a foundation database should stop pursuing it as a funder and redirect effort toward organizations that actually make external grants. If a Kansas history, energy-education, STEM, or museum-sector nonprofit specifically wants to explore a *partnership* (co-hosted event, shared exhibit, cross-promotion) rather than funding, the realistic path is a direct phone call to (316) 321-9333 or email to director@kansasoilmuseum.org with a concrete, narrow proposal — not a generic grant inquiry, since there is no staff function set up to triage unsolicited funding requests. For actual grant dollars in this same geography and sector, the more productive lead surfaced in this research is the Kansas Museums Association (ksmuseums.org/grant-and-funding-opportunities), which runs Institutional Project Grants (up to $500 per project) for KMA member museums, with preference given to museums that have not received an award in the prior three years; that program was closed at last check and expected to reopen in July 2026. The Kansas Department of Commerce's Kansas Creative Arts and Industries Commission (KCAIC) Arts Commission grants are another concrete, active alternative — $1 million was distributed to 108 recipients across 35 Kansas counties in the 2025-2026 cycle, explicitly including funding for museums and arts education. Applicants in Butler County or the broader Kansas arts/history sector should prioritize those two channels over any further attempt to solicit Kansas Oil Museum Inc. directly.