· Private foundation
Better Health for Iowans Foundation Inc
Its FY2020 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 FY2017–2020.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2020
- Under $10k4 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k25 grants · $381k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $100k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| TRANSITIONS DMC INC | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| BURLINGTON COMM SCHOOL DISTRICT | $40,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $30,000 |
| IOWA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY | $27,455 |
| ALANO SOCIETY | $25,000 |
| IOWA FOOD BANK | $18,000 |
| WASHINGTON COMM SCHOOLS MUSIC PROGR | $16,400 |
| LOUISA COUNTY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| MONROE COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH | $15,000 |
| Appanoose Community Care Serv | $15,000 |
| WASHINGTON COUNTY MENTAL HEALTH COA | $15,000 |
| SOUTHWEST IOWA FAMILIES INC | $14,000 |
| IOWA DENTAL FOUNDATION | $13,000 |
| RINGGOLD CO PUBLUC HEALTH | $12,040 |
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 (FY18–20, $11k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 27% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 10% of Better Health for Iowans Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in IA; read by stated purpose it is 88% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +154% since the first grant, against -22% for the ones you funded once.
12 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2020, 1 since wound down; 20 grantees were first funded in FY2020 (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 FY2020, 32% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $337k 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
- TDTransitions DMC Inc3× · 2018–2020 · $58k · revenue +154% · 25% of their budget
- SISOUTHWEST IOWA FAMILIES INC4× · 2017–2020 · $21k · revenue +95%
- IDIOWA DENTAL FOUNDATION3× · 2018–2020 · $19k · revenue +157%
Funded once
- WCWAYNE CO PUBLIC HEALTHone grant, 2017 · $3k
- TYTHE YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER DES MOINESone grant, 2019 · $2k · revenue -22%
- WCWASHINGTON COUNTY DOMESTIC VIOLENCEone grant, 2018 · $2k
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.
To provide safe, structured, peaceful and happy sober living environment. to unify families and help people become productive members of society. build positive relationships and great fellowship with others. to live a clean and sober life…
The organization assists individuals and families with economic hardships.
The mission of the dream center is to make a difference in our communities by meeting both physical and spiritual needs. we are partnering with local organizations to reinstate serving our community each second saturday of the month and to…
To build a movement for justice led by immigrants and refugees in iowa by providing high-quality legal services and community empowerment through organizing.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hope Ministries and the most unlike its peers is The Alano Society Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 40 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 Transitions DMC Inc ↗
- Who funds Iowa Wesleyan University ↗
- Who funds THE ALANO SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWEST IOWA FAMILIES INC ↗
- Who funds IOWA DENTAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Iowa Legal Aid ↗
- Who funds CATHERINE MCAULEY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds THE YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER DES MOINES ↗
- Who funds KPLAY PLAYGROUNDS FOR ALL ↗
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: Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation · GreenState Credit Union · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Better Health for Iowans 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.
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How do I get to Better Health for Iowans Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Better Health for Iowans 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.