· Public charity
Black Hawk County Gaming Association
Helping the cedar valley prosper.
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 $10k2 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $128k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $470k
- $250k+4 grants · $5.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WATERLOO DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION | $2,492,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA | $1,001,000 |
| NORTHEAST IOWA FOOD BANK | $1,000,000 |
| IOWA HEARTLAND HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $1,000,000 |
| FAMILY YMCA OF BLACK HAWK COUNTY | $170,000 |
| CITY OF EVANSDALE | $150,000 |
| RIVER HILLS FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| FRIENDS OF NATIONAL CATTLE CONGRESS | $50,000 |
| CITY OF INDEPENDENCE | $20,000 |
| CITY OF TAMA | $20,000 |
| TRY PIE BAKERY | $16,000 |
| CITY OF FAIRBANK | $15,000 |
| CEDAR VALLEY PRESCHOOL | $14,250 |
| CITY OF NEW HARTFORD | $12,000 |
| OPERATION 11TH HOUR | $10,850 |
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 (FY17–20, $168k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 60% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 9% of Black Hawk County Gaming Association’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.
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 +43% since the first grant, against +17% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 34 since wound down; 8 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $192k 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
- IHIOWA HEARTLAND HABITAT FOR HUMANITY5× · 2018–2025 · $3.1M · revenue +292% · 42% of their budget
- UOUNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA FOUNDATION2× · 2021–2025 · $1.3M · revenue +43%
- NINORTHEAST IOWA FOOD BANK5× · 2018–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +62%
Funded once
- PCPEOPLES COMMUNITY HEALTH CLINIC INCone grant, 2022 · $500k · revenue 0%
- EHELEVATE HOUSING FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $350k · revenue +18%
- CVCEDAR VALLEY KIDSgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $300k · revenue +32%
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.
Provide a lean, straightforward, and transparent conduit vehicle to those who wish to contribute resources for the betterment of the greater waterloo, iowa community and its citizens.
Seeking to build a stronger, more caring community by forming partnerships with businesses, community experts, education & health & human service agencies to achieve targeted outcomes & sustained changes in community conditions which will…
The community foundation for western iowa is dedicated to creating a lasting legacy in our region by engaging our citizens and communities for durable change and fostering a culture of philanthropy. this is where giving grows.
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.
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.
Community action of eastern iowa respectfully partners with people to improve their health, finances, and education.
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.
Facilitate economic opportunity, business success, community engagement, prosperity, and quality of life for rural western iowa
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.
The organization receives, warehouses, and distributes salvageable food items to non-profit tax exempt member agencies to feed the ill, needy, and infants.
Coordinate area economic development
To provide advocacy and services for disadvantaged persons and bring about institutional change for the benefit of the people we serve and the community at large. (see schedule o).to achieve this mission, scicap operates programs to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Iowa Legal Aid and the most unlike its peers is Waverly Public Library Founation. 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 27 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
92 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. 92 of the 127 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 WATERLOO DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds IOWA HEARTLAND HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds HAWKEYE COMMUNITY COLLEGE FDN ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST IOWA FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds PEOPLES COMMUNITY HEALTH CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds ELEVATE HOUSING FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CEDAR VALLEY KIDS ↗
- Who funds GROUT MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds CEDAR FALLS HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HW GROUT TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE FAMILY YMCA OF BLACK HAWK COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CEDAR FALLS COMMUNITY THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds WATERLOO HOUSING TRUST FUND ↗
- Who funds Youth Art Team ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF THE CEDAR VALLEY ↗
- Who funds IOWA JOBS FOR AMERICA'S GRADUATES INC ↗
- Who funds 247 BLAC ↗
- Who funds SILOS & SMOKESTACKS NATIONAL HERITAGE AREA INC ↗
- Who funds EXCEPTIONAL PERSONS INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL RIVERS AREA EDUCATION AGENCY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WATERLOO PUBLIC LIBR ↗
- Who funds JESSE COSBY NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CEDAR VALLEY ARBORETUM & BOTANIC GARDENS ↗
- Who funds AFRO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY BROADCASTING 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: Otto Schoitz Foundation · Max and Helen Guernsey Charitable Foundation · Lsb Foundation · Cedar Valley United Way · The Gallagher Family Foundation · Trustage Foundation Inc · R J McElroy Trust · Duroe Family Foundation · Van G Miller Family Charitable Foundation · GreenState Credit Union · Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation · Dupaco RW Hoefer 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 Black Hawk County Gaming Association 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.