· Private foundation
Carl A Nelson Charitable 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BURLINGTON AREA YMCA | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| YOUNGHOUSE FAMILY SERVICES | $1,900 |
| YMCA OF WASHINGTON COUNTY IOWA | $1,500 |
| FORT MADISON FAMILY YMCA | $1,500 |
| HEARTSONG | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,000 |
| BURLINGTON AREA HOMELESS SHELTER | $750 |
| SE IOWA REGIONAL HOSPICE | $750 |
| TRANSITIONS DMC | $500 |
| CEDAR RIVER HAVEN | $500 |
| NORTHEAST IOWA FOOD BANK | $500 |
| PEOPLES COMMUNITY HEALTH CLINIC | $500 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $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 (FY20–25, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 95% 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 +22% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
31 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 9 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, 69% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- BABURLINGTON AREA YMCA INC6× · 2020–2025 · $7k · revenue +71%
- BABURLINGTON AREA HOMELESS SHELTER5× · 2020–2025 · $3k · revenue +43%
- TDTransitions DMC Inc3× · 2023–2025 · $1k · revenue +22%
Funded once
- MPMID PRAIRIE COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +9%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $2k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $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.
We are a state licensed substance abuse facility which functions to provide a clinically managed residence treatment center for women and women with children.
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.
Mica helps families experencing poverty meet their needs, build on their strengths, and achieve their goals.
The organization receives, warehouses, and distributes salvageable food items to non-profit tax exempt member agencies to feed the ill, needy, and infants.
Child day care center
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.
Community action of eastern iowa respectfully partners with people to improve their health, finances, and education.
Through dynamic partnerships, quality family services, advocacy and education, neicac advances community development and improves social and economic conditions for individuals and families with limited resources.
Prevent criminal activity and reduce populations in correctional facilities by treatment, education and counseling to persons with addictions, which often result in criminal behavior.
Christian caring - enhancing lives through a commitment to individualized care in a home empowered by god's love.
Reach for your potential, inc is a provider of adult daycare services and rehabilitation/housing of disabled individuals serving approximately 135 individuals from iowa city and the surrounding communities.
Ywca is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Iowa Legal Aid and the most unlike its peers is Heart Song Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 71 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.
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: Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · John H Witte Jr Foundation Trust · Burlington W Burlington Area United Way · Harry & Virginia Murray Foundation · Max and Helen Guernsey Charitable Foundation · R J McElroy Trust · Otto Schoitz Foundation · Community Foundation of Greater Muscatine · GreenState Credit Union · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Carl A Nelson Charitable 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 Carl A Nelson Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Carl A Nelson Charitable 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.