· Private foundation
Brownell Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k12 grants · $44k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $123k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $260k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gun Owners of America Inc | $102,309 |
| SOWW | $82,502 |
| Des Moines Metro Opera | $75,000 |
| Claude W & Dolly Ahrens Foundation | $27,500 |
| Second Amendment Foundation | $25,335 |
| Iowa Firearms Coalition | $25,335 |
| Boone and Crockett Club Foundation Inc | $20,000 |
| Linn County Izaak Walton League | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| Command and General Staff College Foundation Inc | $5,000 |
| GRinnell-Newburg Community School District | $5,000 |
| Greater Powesehiek Community Foundation | $5,000 |
| Iowa College Foundation | $5,000 |
| USA Clay Target League Inc | $4,350 |
| Trinidad State College Foundation | $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 (FY21–25, $446k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 -1% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 7 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $44k 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 METRO OPERA INC6× · 2019–2025 · $550k · revenue +83%
- SCSOWW Corp4× · 2022–2025 · $423k · revenue +29%
- SASECOND AMENDMENT FOUNDATION4× · 2022–2025 · $161k · revenue +32%
Funded once
- IHINDELIBLE HOUSING INCone grant, 2021 · $200k · revenue -96%
- SCSOWW CHARITYone grant, 2021 · $137k
- SISOLUTIONARY INCone grant, 2021 · $120k
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.
Receive donations for dmacc.
To advocate for the second amendment rights of all law abiding iowa citizens
Provide educational scholarships
The minneapolis community & technical college foundation helps solve issues of affordability and access to higher education through funds and provides part or all of the funding to the college to develop technical college foundation…
None
Iowa first fund was organized for the purpose of educating and informing iowa voters about limited government and expanding economic opportunity.
The dctc foundation's mission is to foster student success and elevate the academic experience at dakota county technical college by securing resources through strong partnerships with employers, alumni, and the community.
The foundation's mission is "fulfilling donor wishes for the student success." it serves grayson college through the development of public understanding and philanthropic support. the foundation encourages mutually beneficial relationships…
To establish and support school-based clay target shooting programs in iowa
To conduct fraternal, educational, and charitable activities and to providestudent scholarships
The pine technical and community college foundation is a partner with the college in providing leadership in education in the region. the foundation will become a collaborator in building programs, services and facilities that benefit…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Second Amendment Foundation and the most unlike its peers is The Double D Foundation 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 29 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
29 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. 29 of the 69 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 METRO OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds SOWW Corp ↗
- Who funds FPC ACTION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds INDELIBLE HOUSING INC ↗
- Who funds SECOND AMENDMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GUN OWNERS OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds Greater Poweshiek Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN SUPPRESSOR ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds GRINNELL SCHOOL OF MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds THE DOUBLE D FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds 1791 Alliance ↗
- Who funds THE CYLINDER INC ↗
- Who funds Claude W & Dolly Ahrens Foundation ↗
- Who funds BOONE AND CROCKETT CLUB FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds IOWA FIREARMS COALITION ↗
- Who funds COMMAND AND GENERAL STAFF COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LINK Inc ↗
- Who funds MID-IOWA COUNCIL OF BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds Grinnell Area Arts Council DBA Grinnell Community TheatreTurlachUr ↗
- Who funds MONTGOMERY COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MURRAY STATE COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds TRINIDAD STATE COLLEGE FOUNDATION 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: The Trustees of Grinnell College · Grinnell Mutual Group Foundation · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · Pella Rolscreen Foundation · National Rifle Association of America · Greater Poweshiek Community Foundation · Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust
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 Brownell Family 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Brownell Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Brownell Family 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.