· Private foundation
Carlson 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $500k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $690k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| YSS | $250,000 |
| IOWA HOMELESS YOUTH CENTERS | $60,000 |
| DMARC | $60,000 |
| MEALS FROM THE HEARTLAND | $60,000 |
| CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| ELLIPSIS | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| FCA | $50,000 |
| LOVE INC | $50,000 |
| EVERYSTEP | $50,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $50,000 |
| HOPE MINISTRIES | $50,000 |
| FOOD BANK OF IOWA | $50,000 |
| COLTS YOUTH ORGANIZATION | $45,000 |
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, $758k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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.
37 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2025, 9 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, 70% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $435k 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
- EIELLIPSIS INC5× · 2021–2025 · $725k · revenue +8%
- CFCYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION9× · 2017–2025 · $385k · revenue +29%
- YAYOUTH AND SHELTER SERVICES INC9× · 2017–2025 · $378k · revenue +145%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $120k
- FFFFA FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $50k
- COCITY OF URBANDALEPARKS RECREATIONone grant, 2019 · $20k
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.
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…
To provide shelter and services to families experiencing homelessness
Health care services for the people of western nebraska and eastern wyoming.
Common good iowa engages iowans to create and advocate for research-based public policy that makes life better and more equitable for all who make iowa home.
The mission of cornerhouse is to partner with families, communities, and systems - entrusted with the safety of children, youth and vulnerable adults - to reduce trauma and end abuse.
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
To provide high-quality and compassionate care to community members approaching the end of life.
As followers of christ, hope haven's mission is to empower individuals with disabilities through work and life skills so that they may enjoy a productive life in their community.
Unite the caring power of communities to invest in effective solutions to improve people's lives.
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.
We exist to serve our patients with compassionate health care of the highest quality.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Meals From the Heartland Inc and the most unlike its peers is Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. 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 49 years old; the field is 55. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 11% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 50 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 ELLIPSIS INC ↗
- Who funds CYSTIC FIBROSIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUTH AND SHELTER SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds URBANDALE FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds MEALS FROM THE HEARTLAND INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds IOWA PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF THE HEARTLAND INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND VIEW UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds SUNFLOWER HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SERVICES IN IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds LEGION-AIRES DRUM AND BUGLE CORPS ↗
- Who funds ROSE BROOKS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S CANCER CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds NEWHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds RESTORATION HOUSE OF GREATER KANSAS CITY ↗
- Who funds YOUTH EMERGENCY SERVICES & SHELTER OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds OPERATION BREAKTHROUGH INC ↗
- Who funds Greater Kansas City Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds WESLEYLIFE ↗
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 · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · The West Bancorporation Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Pella Rolscreen Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Mid-Iowa Health Foundation · Athene Charitable Foundation · Ita Group Foundation · EMC Insurance Foundation · United Way Worldwide
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 Carlson 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.