· Private foundation
Athene Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k30 grants · $104k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $153k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $757k
- $250k+3 grants · $2.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| United Way of Central Iowa | $1,339,278 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,218,333 |
| ChildServe Foundation | $333,334 |
| AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION | $181,351 |
| Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity | $166,667 |
| Scholarship America | $119,500 |
| Easter Seals of Iowa | $115,000 |
| WesleyLife Foundation | $100,000 |
| Greenwich United Way | $74,129 |
| Catholic Charities | $20,000 |
| DMARC Food Pantry | $20,000 |
| Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Iowa | $20,000 |
| Healthy Birth Day Inc | $15,000 |
| Sleep In Heavenly Peace Inc | $15,000 |
| Children's Cancer Connection | $15,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $511k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 92% 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +27% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
80 repeat relationships — 32 still active in FY2024, 48 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 52% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.8M 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
- GDGREATER DES MOINES HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC2× · 2023–2024 · $336k · revenue +27%
- FBFOOD BANK OF IOWA4× · 2020–2024 · $67k · revenue +42%
- BBBIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF CENTRAL IOWA4× · 2020–2024 · $60k · revenue +67%
Funded once
- AOAMERICAN ONLINE GIVING ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2023 · $144k
- UDURBAN DREAMSone grant, 2022 · $72k · revenue -55%
- UJUNITED JEWISH APPEAL-FEDERATION OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES OF NEW YORK INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $36k · revenue +46%
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.
Common good iowa engages iowans to create and advocate for research-based public policy that makes life better and more equitable for all who make iowa home.
The university of iowa center for advancement's mission is to advance the university of iowa through engagement and philanthropy. we serve our alumni and friends in the state and the region, throughout the country, and around the world. we…
Unite the caring power of communities to invest in effective solutions to improve people's lives.
The foundation for the iowa city community school district connects the community with our schools to ensure every student has extraordinary learning experiences. together we empower teachers and district staff and inspire students to…
Our mission is to advance the practice of medicine through advocacy, education, and engagement with physicians throughout iowa to ensure the highest quality of care for the patients they serve.
Founded in 1995 as the philanthropic arm of the iowa credit union league and guided by the credit union philosophy of "people helping people", the iowa credit union foundation (the foundation) works to champion financial well-being for…
The foundation is organized to further the growth and development of private colleges and universities of higher education in iowa.
To promote the common business interests of member companies without profit and without the inuring of income to the benefit of any member company or individual. to present the executive, legislative, judicial and regulatory bodies…
Our mission is to strengthen the university of iowa through alumni engagement. we do this through our communications, alumni programs, and events.
Our mission is to inspire the iowa city area to be greater by: 1) elevating business, 2) investing in strategic initiatives, and 3) advocating for the economic resiliency of the greater community.
To improve lives in our global community by educating diverse groups of highly competent and compassionate health professionals.
To provide financial assistance to unity healthcare to help enable it to carry out its exempt function of providing health care to the community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Meals From the Heartland Inc and the most unlike its peers is Jesse J Sanctuary Foundation. 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 26 years old; the field is 38. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 6% 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.
116 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. 116 of the 162 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 UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds GREAT OUTDOORS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER DES MOINES HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDSERVE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WESLEYLIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREENWICH INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN DREAMS ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds UNITED JEWISH APPEAL-FEDERATION OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds JEWELS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds MAINFRAME STUDIOS ↗
- Who funds THE NEW CANAAN COUNTRY SCHOOL INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Friends of Bermuda Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds HIP-HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S CANCER CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY BIRTH DAY INC ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SERVICES IN IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds IWLC ↗
- Who funds IOWA ASIAN ALLIANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL CITY PRIDE ↗
- Who funds PROTEUS INC ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds LATINO RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds TECH JOURNEY INC ↗
- Who funds ONE IOWA ↗
- Who funds HOMES OF OAKRIDGE HUMAN SERVICES ↗
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: Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · Ita Group Foundation · EMC Insurance Foundation · United Way of Central Iowa · Meredith Corporation Foundation · GreenState Credit Union · Lsb Foundation · Variety - the Children's Charity of Iowa · William C Knapp Charitable Fdn · The West Bancorporation 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 Athene Charitable 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 or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- United Way of Hunterdon County — 10% of income from government
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% 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 Athene Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Athene Charitable 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.