· Public charity
Bravo Greater Des Moines Inc
The mission of bravo greater des moines is to leverage community resources to maximize the impact of arts, culture and heritage to advance regional priorities.
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 $10k18 grants · $137k
- $10k–50k26 grants · $690k
- $50k–250k21 grants · $2.7M
- $250k+7 grants · $2.6M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DES MOINES PERFORMING ARTS | $550,000 |
| EDMUNDSON ART FOUNDATION INC DBA DES MOINES ART CENTER | $500,000 |
| BLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INC | $375,000 |
| HOYT SHERMAN PLACE FOUNDATION | $332,075 |
| SCIENCE CENTER OF IOWA | $305,200 |
| BALLET DES MOINES | $289,580 |
| DES MOINES METRO OPERA INC | $286,425 |
| DES MOINES FILM SOCIETY | $246,283 |
| GREATER DES MOINES BOTANICAL GARDEN | $245,000 |
| DES MOINES COMMUNITY PLAYHOUSE | $240,179 |
| DES MOINES SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION | $220,400 |
| MAINFRAME STUDIOS | $198,910 |
| ARTS FOR THE CITY INC | $175,650 |
| LIVING HISTORY FARMS FOUNDATION | $163,025 |
| SALISBURY HOUSE FOUNDATION | $150,000 |
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, $471k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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 +34% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
101 repeat relationships — 65 still active in FY2025, 36 since wound down; 6 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; $101k 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
- DMDES MOINES PERFORMING ARTS9× · 2017–2025 · $5.2M · revenue +64%
- EAEdmundson Art Foundation Inc9× · 2017–2025 · $3.8M · revenue +53%
- SCSCIENCE CENTER OF IOWA9× · 2017–2025 · $3.2M · revenue +4%
Funded once
- UCURBANDALE COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICTone grant, 2023 · $40k
- COCity of Pleasant Hillone grant, 2024 · $25k
- COCity of Indianola Police Departmentone grant, 2024 · $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.
To maintain, improve and restore 3 historical properties
Iowa dance theatre's mission is to raise awareness, develop appreciation, increase opportunities and support dance as a performing art within our community.
The mission of summer of the arts is to build community in the iowa city area, to experience, learn about, and enjoy free arts and cultural programming.
Preserving historic buildings in des moines, iowa
Des moines education foundation concentrates its giving on efforts integrating the arts in the des moines public schools that provide k-8 students firsthand opportunities to increase student engagement and narrow acheivement gaps
The foundation owns and maintains an arts center facility in davenport, iowa.
To develop opportunities for the community to experience arts.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Des Moines Community Playhouse and the most unlike its peers is World Food Prize Foundation. 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 23 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) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
82 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. 82 of the 134 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 DES MOINES PERFORMING ARTS ↗
- Who funds Edmundson Art Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE CENTER OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES METRO OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER DES MOINES BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES COMMUNITY PLAYHOUSE ↗
- Who funds HOYT SHERMAN PLACE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LIVING HISTORY FARMS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BALLET DES MOINES ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES ARTS FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds SALISBURY HOUSE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER DES MOINES MUSIC COALITION ↗
- Who funds MAINFRAME STUDIOS ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES FILM SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CULTUREALL INC ↗
- Who funds CIVIC MUSIC ASSOCIATION DES MOINES ↗
- Who funds IOWA ARTS IN EDUCATION DBA ARTFORCE IOWA ↗
- Who funds IOWA HISTORICAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER DES MOINES PUBLIC ART FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IOWA ASIAN ALLIANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ARTS FOR THE CITY INC ↗
- Who funds IOWA GOLD STAR MILITARY MUSEUM BOARD ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES SOCIAL CLUB ↗
- Who funds DOWNTOWN EVENTS GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL CITY PRIDE ↗
- Who funds STAGEWEST THEATER COMPANY ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND YOUTH CHOIR ↗
- Who funds WEST DES MOINES HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds GIRLS ROCK DES MOINES ↗
- Who funds IHSAA ACHIEVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LATINO RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds ANKENY FRIENDS OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds World Food Prize Foundation ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER DES MOINES ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES GAY MEN'S CHORUS ↗
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: Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · EMC Insurance Foundation · Golf Charitable Foundation of Greater Des Moines · Meredith Corporation Foundation · United Way of Central Iowa · Bookey Family Foundation · The West Bancorporation Foundation Inc · Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust · Ita Group Foundation · Athene Charitable Foundation · Variety - the Children's Charity of Iowa
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 Bravo Greater Des Moines 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.