· Private foundation
Barbara Meyer Elsner Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k6 grants · $20k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $45k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT BURNHAM BLOCK | $44,625 |
| WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $7,292 |
| MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM | $6,750 |
| MUSEUM OF WISCONSIN ART | $5,000 |
| WILD SPACE DANCE CO | $1,000 |
| GLACIAL LAKES CONSERVANCY | $250 |
| PBS | $200 |
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 (FY19–19, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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 +72% since the first grant, against +6% for the ones you funded once.
28 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 22 since wound down; 1 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- MAMILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM INC8× · 2017–2025 · $34k · revenue +34%
MILWAUKEE AREA TECHNICAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC6× · 2018–2024 · $34k · revenue +83%- HMHISTORIC MILWAUKEE INC6× · 2017–2022 · $11k · revenue +41%
Funded once
HUNGER TASK FORCE INCone grant, 2020 · $16k · revenue -17%- SHSTATE HISTORICAL SOCIETYone grant, 2021 · $15k
- WTWISCONSIN TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION INCone grant, 2021 · $15k
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.
WMNC will continue constructing the new Milwaukee Public Museum facility to completion and will then continue as the owner and operator of the new museum.
Supporting the charitable, scientific and educational purposes of the milwaukee public museum.
The milwaukee county historical society was founded in 1935 to collect, preserve, and make available materials relating to the history of the milwaukee community.
The wisconsin maritime museum connects all people with wisconsin's waterways, by engaging and educating the public about wisconsin's maritime history, wisconsin's world war ii submarines, uss cobia, and the great lakes. the wisconsin…
The war memorial center's mission is to honor the dead and serve the living. we commemorate the courageous men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of freedom while preserving and sharing the stories, experiences, and…
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.
To partner with the public and private sectors to develop and hold real estate for the benefit of the university of wisconsin-milwaukee. the uwm real estate foundation, inc. holdings may include any properties that advance the mission of…
The museum is an educational institution dedicated to preserving the history and culture of waukesha county.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
Making the arts accessible to all
Promote modern, contemporary art through exhibitions, educational programs, and collecting.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Milwaukee Art Museum Inc and the most unlike its peers is Whitney Museum of American Art. 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 44 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 11% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 54 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 MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE AREA TECHNICAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HUNGER TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER MILWAUKEE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF WISCONSIN ART INC ↗
- Who funds Metro Milwaukee Mediation Services Inc ↗
- Who funds FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT BUILDING CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds WILD SPACE INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S FUND OF GREATER MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE PRESERVATION ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds SAINT JOHNS COMMUNITIES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PABST MANSION INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE PARK FRIENDS LTD ↗
- Who funds CASCADE FIRE DEPARTMENT INC ↗
- Who funds VILLA TERRACE MUSEUM AND GARDENS LTD ↗
- Who funds GLACIAL LAKES CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds TALIESIN PRESERVATION 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 · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Bert L and Patricia S Steigleder Charitable · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Coles Family Foundation co Peter Coles · Dudley and Constance Godfrey Foundation Inc · Ralph Evinrude Foundation Inc · Bradley Impact Fund Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · National Center for Housing Management 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 Barbara Meyer Elsner 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.
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 Barbara Meyer Elsner Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Barbara Meyer Elsner 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.