· Private foundation
Alton Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $106k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MAYO CLINIC | $31,400 |
| MAYO CLINIC | $20,000 |
| ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF SMITH COLLEGE | $15,000 |
| MITCHELL HAMLINE SCHOOL OF LAW | $10,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $10,000 |
| GREAT RIVER CHILDREN'S MUSEUM | $10,000 |
| ALLINA HEALTH FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| LA POINTE COMMUNITY CLINIC | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| PALM BEACH DAY ACADEMY | $5,000 |
| CLEVELAND CLINIC FLORIDA | $5,000 |
| MINNESOTA LAND TRUST | $2,000 |
| DUCKS UNLIMITED | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| MADELINE ISLAND PUBLIC LIBRARY | $1,000 |
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 (FY17–23, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 5%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 13% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
41 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 18 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- MHMITCHELL HAMLINE SCHOOL OF LAW8× · 2018–2025 · $80k · revenue +23%
- LPLA POINTE COMMUNITY CLINIC INC9× · 2017–2025 · $44k · revenue +240%
- PBPALM BEACH DAY ACADEMY INC9× · 2017–2025 · $36k · revenue +80%
Funded once
- MCMAYO CLINIC HEALTH SYSTEM-SOUTHWEST WISCONSIN REGION INCone grant, 2020 · $50k
- HUHAMLINE UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $10k
- HWHumane World for Animals Incgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $5k · revenue +31%
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 University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
To be the leading voice of medicine to make minnesota the healthiest state and the best place to practice.
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
To provide the highest level of stewardship for university donors through professional management and oversight of the university of minnesota foundation's assets by creating a focused investment environment with clarity of purpose,…
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
Marietta college (mc) provides a strong foundation for a lifetime of leadership, critical thinking, and problem solving. we achieve this mission by offering undergraduates a contemporary liberal arts education and graduate students an…
To advance the practice of higher education attorneys for the benefit of the institutions they serve.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Minnesota Foundation and the most unlike its peers is La Pointe Community Clinic Inc. 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 62 years old; the field is 20. 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 — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 63 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 MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds ABBOTT NORTHWESTERN HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MITCHELL HAMLINE SCHOOL OF LAW ↗
- Who funds Alumnae Association of Smith College ↗
- Who funds LA POINTE COMMUNITY CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds GREAT RIVER CHILDRENS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds PALM BEACH DAY ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds ALLINA HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds LAWYERS CONCERNED FOR LAWYERS ↗
- Who funds Ducks Unlimited Inc ↗
- Who funds Jacksonville University ↗
- Who funds PRESIDENT-BOARD OF TRUSTEES SANTA CLARA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds PANCREATIC CANCER ACTION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds The Lift Garage ↗
- Who funds ORONO FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds INTERFAITH OUTREACH AND COMMUNITY PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds MOUNT OLIVET ROLLING ACRES INC ↗
- Who funds MINNETONKA CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds GUNFLINT TRAIL VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds Humane World for Animals Inc ↗
- Who funds BRIGHTFOCUS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF DENVER ↗
- Who funds THE BLAKE SCHOOL ↗
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: The Minneapolis Foundation · Mightycause Charitable Foundation · Longview Foundation · The Head Family Foundation · Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Xcel Energy Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Charities Aid Foundation America
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 Alton 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- The Trustees of the Stevens Institute of Technology — 12% of income from government
- Jacksonville University — 3% of income from government
- Rollins College — 0% of income from government
- Palm Beach Day Academy Inc — 0% of income from government
- Guadalupe Center Inc — 0% of income from government
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 Alton Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Alton 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.