· Private foundation
Alvin a Marion Birnschein Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $258k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UWM RESEARCH FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY | $28,000 |
| INDEPENDENCE FIRST | $25,000 |
| AFAR DBA THE ABILITY CENTER | $20,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD | $20,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| WUWM 897 MILWAUKEE'S NPR | $15,000 |
| CENTER FOR DEAF-BLIND PERSONS INC | $15,000 |
| ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF MILWAUKEE | $15,000 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY OF MILW COUNTY | $15,000 |
| MILWAUKEE PBS | $15,000 |
| LAS CASA DE ESPERANZA INC | $10,000 |
| SCHILTZ AUDUBON NATURE CENTER | $10,000 |
| AUDIO & BRAILLE LITERACY ENHANCEMEN | $10,000 |
| SHERMAN PHOENIX FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $298k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 97% 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.
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 +24% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 4 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $50k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2025 · $170k · revenue +39%
- URUWM RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC5× · 2017–2025 · $150k · revenue +9%
AUDIO & BRAILLE LITERACY ENHANCEMENT INC9× · 2017–2025 · $78k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $15k
MILWAUKEE AREA TECHNICAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2021 · $15k · revenue +8%
Safe & Sound Incone grant, 2021 · $10k · revenue -28%
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.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
To reach a new generation of radio listeners on air, online and in the community with a compelling selection of music and public affairs programming. the corporation celebrates milwaukee music, arts, heritage, and culture by supporting and…
Making the arts accessible to all
The wisconsin council of the blind and visually impaired's mission is to promote the dignity and empowerment of people in wisconsin who are blind and visually impaired by providing services, advocating legislation, and educating the…
Pathways of wisconsin provides supported employment opportunities and empowerment through quality, person-centered programming for individuals of all abilities.
Engage our community in supporting milwaukee county parks to collectively steward a thriving park system.
Milwaukee women inc is an organization of executives determined to change the quality and composition of corporate boards to maximize the performance of public and private companies with a focus on women and women of color.
The milwaukee community service corps (mcsc) is a non-profit vocational training organization providing employment, education and life skills to training youth adults and unemployed and underemployed of milwaukee, wisconsin.
To enhance opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (i/dd) to participate fully in their community as valued neighbors, productive workers and respected citizens. portal, inc. assists more than 200 adults…
Our mission is to empower WI Habitat for Humanity affiliates to create one voice that advocates and influences affordable home ownership.
We enhance the well-being of people of all ages with disabilities across wisconsin through the management of special needs trusts by promoting more choice and opportunities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Independence First Inc and the most unlike its peers is Acacia Theatre Company Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 39 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
38 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. 38 of the 58 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 INDEPENDENCE FIRST INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BETTY BRINN CHILDREN'S MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds UWM RESEARCH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AUDIO & BRAILLE LITERACY ENHANCEMENT INC ↗
- Who funds Marquette University ↗
- Who funds Kathy's House Inc ↗
- Who funds HUNGER TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR DEAF-BLIND PERSONS INC ↗
- Who funds AFAR INC DBA THE ABILITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds HEAR Wisconsin Inc ↗
- Who funds ACACIA THEATRE COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds ACTS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds SOJOURNER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EISENHOWER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE OF OZAUKEE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE AREA TECHNICAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Prevent Blindness Wisconsin ↗
- Who funds Safe & Sound Inc ↗
- Who funds UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds HOMETOWN HEROES INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds LIFESTRIDERS INC ↗
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 Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Evan & Marion Helfaer Foundation · Schoenleber Foundation Inc · Anon Charitable Trust · Jerome J and Dorothy H Holz Family Foundation C/O Donald Tushaus · Ralph Evinrude Foundation Inc · Waukesha County Community Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Joseph and Vera Zilber Family Foundation Inc
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 Alvin a Marion Birnschein Foundation Inc 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 Alvin a Marion Birnschein Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Alvin a Marion Birnschein Foundation Inc 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.