· Community foundation
Black River Falls Area Foundation
We address a broad range of community goals rather than focusing on one particular issue.
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.
The 14 grants below total $501,392 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $655,566 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $154,174 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k4 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $151k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $323k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CITY OF BLACK RIVER FALLS SKYLINE GOLF COURSE | $223,265 |
| JACKSON COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY | $100,000 |
| BLACK RIVER FALLS UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $45,000 |
| CITY OF BLACK RIVER FALLS PUBLIC LIBRARY | $27,000 |
| MIGHTY TABLE | $19,800 |
| CITY OF BLACK RIVER FALLS | $19,182 |
| BLACK RIVER FALLS SCHOOL DISTRICT | $10,245 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF JACKSON COUNTY | $10,000 |
| BLAIR TAYLOR SCHOOL DISTRICT | $10,000 |
| VILLAGE OF ALMA CENTER | $10,000 |
| JC INTERFAITH VOLUNTEER CAREGIVERS | $8,600 |
| HIXTON VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT | $6,500 |
| ALMA CENTER COMMUNITY FIRE DISTRICT (COUNTY LINE FIRE & RESCUE) | $6,300 |
| JACKSON COUNTY DEPART HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES | $5,500 |
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 (FY17–24, $58k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
20 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 9 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- JCJackson County Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers Inc6× · 2019–2025 · $503k · revenue +146% · 93% of their budget
- JCJackson County Humane Society Inc5× · 2017–2025 · $425k · revenue +245% · 80% of their budget
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF THE GREATER CHIPPEWA VALLEY INC5× · 2019–2025 · $76k · revenue +31%
Funded once
- BRBLACK RIVER HEALTH INCone grant, 2023 · $49k · revenue -6%
- VOVILLAGE OF ALMA CENTER - FIRST RESPONDERSone grant, 2020 · $31k
- BEBRF - EDUCATIONAL ENRICHMENT FUNDone grant, 2019 · $25k
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 fire protection and first responder services to the towns of black wolf and friendship, wisconsin
The mission of jackson community ambulance is to provide high-quality out-of-hospital care and transportation services to the communities we serve.
Serving the village of twin lakes wi and surrounding communities with full time paid staff and volunteer assistajce for firefighting and rescue services
Provide emergency medical services and transport to the Village of New Glarus and surrounding municipalities
To providefire & emergency protection to area residence
Protect lives and property from fire/disaster
Provide emergency medical services in the fennimore, wi area.
Provide emergency medical care to sick & injured.
Provide food to those in need in the River Falls Community
Provide rescue and other community emergency services
Retrieve, house & relocate animals
To provide emergency fire, rescue and ambulance services to Brady Township and surrounding communities.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Black River Health Inc and the most unlike its peers is Bruces Legacy Inc. 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 25 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% 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 7% 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.
15 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. 15 of the 38 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 Jackson County Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers Inc ↗
- Who funds Jackson County Humane Society Inc ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF THE GREATER CHIPPEWA VALLEY INC ↗
- Who funds HATFIELD FIRE & RESCUE INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK RIVER HEALTH INC ↗
- Who funds HIXTON VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS SHARING FOOD INC ↗
- Who funds BOLTON REFUGE HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PROMISE OF THE GREAT RIVERS INC ↗
- Who funds Farmington Emergency Medical Team Inc ↗
- Who funds BLACK RIVER AREA CHILDCARE SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds APTIV INC ↗
- Who funds JACKSON COUNTY CHILD CARE NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds Bruces Legacy 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: Lunda Charitable Fund Inc · Land O'Lakes Foundation · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Alliant Energy Foundation 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 Black River Falls Area 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.