· Private foundation
Bertha Stebens Charitable 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NORTH IOWA COMMUNITY ACTION ORGANIZATION | $7,500 |
| FREEDOM INN HIS GRACE MINISTRY | $7,000 |
| COMMUNITY KITCHEN OF NORTH IOWA | $6,000 |
| MERCY MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION NORTH IOWA | $5,600 |
| ELDERBRIDGE AGENCY ON AGING | $5,000 |
| NORTH IOWA AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CLEAR LAKE DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| STEBENS CHILDRENS THEATRE | $5,000 |
| NORTH IOWA BAND FESTIVAL FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS OF MASON CITY INC | $5,000 |
| STEBENS CHILDRENS THEATRE | $5,000 |
| CARING PREGNANCY CENTER | $5,000 |
| BEST BUDDIES INTERNATIONAL INC | $4,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INTERNATIONAL INC | $4,000 |
| GIRL SCOUTS OF GREATER IOWA | $4,000 |
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, $103k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 0% 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.
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 +29% since the first grant, against +11% for the ones you funded once.
64 repeat relationships — 33 still active in FY2025, 31 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k 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
- NINORTH IOWA AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION7× · 2019–2025 · $85k · revenue +148%
- CLCLEAR LAKE CLASSICAL INCORPORATED9× · 2017–2025 · $61k · revenue +651%
- YMYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION6× · 2018–2025 · $43k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- MMMERCY MEDICAL CENTERgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue +59%
- CLCLEAR LAKE ARTS CENTERone grant, 2018 · $20k
- SVSWALEDALE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENTone grant, 2018 · $5k
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.
Enhance the economy of mason city and promote the north iowa area as a destination for overnight visitors.
To promote the development, growth and utilization of childrens advocacy centers and multidisciplinary teams to better serve Iowas abused and neglected children and their families.
To advance tourism, assist in new and existing business development and promote economic, professional, cultural and civic interests in the iowa great lakes area.
Support business and industry with retention and expansion projects and attract new business and industry to cerro gordo county, mason city and clear lake.
To improve member newspapers
In partnership with state and federal government, our mission is to administer programs designed to help residents in our 10-county region of southwest iowa achieve self-sufficiency.
ICCJ assists children in custody disputes through child focused education and legal services. ICCJ provides education and legal services on a reduced fee or at no charge based on the ability to pay.
The organization endeavors to provide safe emergency and transitional shelter and meals to homeless adults along with resource assistance to move clients beyond homelessness and toward independent living.
To provide low-cost housing to eligible families.
To assist in the provision of a better life for iowa's low-income residents, through assistance to the community action organization located within the state.
To provide a highly structured environment which emphasizes a safety and security to all juveniles while serving as a deterrent to criminal and anti-social behaviors. Working youth in the center and communities.
Community action of eastern iowa respectfully partners with people to improve their health, finances, and education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Iowa Transition and Employment Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Christmas Cheer Fund 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 38 years old; the field is 55. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 7% 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 4% 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.
48 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 48 of the 91 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 NORTH IOWA AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLEAR LAKE CLASSICAL INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Elderbridge Agency on Aging ↗
- Who funds NORTH IOWA BAND FESTIVAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CARING PREGNANCY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds North Iowa Community Action Organization ↗
- Who funds STEBENS CHILDREN'S THEATRE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY KITCHEN OF NORTH IA INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL GARDENS OF NORTH IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds MERCY MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION - NORTH IOWA ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF GREATER IOWA ↗
- Who funds MASON CITY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF NORTH CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds RIVER CITY SOCIETY FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION ↗
- Who funds NORTH IOWA TRANSITION AND EMPLOYMENT SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF MASON CITY INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH CENTRAL IOWA AG IN THE CLASSROOM ↗
- Who funds MERCY MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds RIVER CITY SCULPTURES ON PARADE IN ↗
- Who funds NIAD CENTER FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN LIGHTS ALLIANCE FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF IOWA CASA & ICFCRB ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER OF FORT DODGE INC ↗
- Who funds SENIOR CITIZENS CENTER ↗
- Who funds One Vision ↗
- Who funds CHARLIE BROWN COMMUNITY DAY CARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S CANCER CONNECTION ↗
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: Farrer Endowment Foundation · First Citizens Bank Charitable Foundation · The David & Phyllis Murphy Charitable Foundation · Tomson Family Foundation Trust · John K and Luise V Hanson Foundation · United Way of North Central Iowa · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Beth E Reinhart Charitable Trust · Kinney-Lindstrom Foundation Inc · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Dorothy Ann Weitzel and Thomas F W · Stratford Foundation
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 Bertha Stebens 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.
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% 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.
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How do I get to Bertha Stebens Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Bertha Stebens 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.