· Community foundation
Cedar Falls Community Foundation
The CEDAR FALLS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION inspires and connects individuals, families, and organizations to enhance our community, support non-profits, elevate educational opportunities, and build legacies through philanthropy.
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 5 grants below total $235,188 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $330,702 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $95,514 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 $10k2 grants · $14k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $25k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $196k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CITY OF CEDAR FALLS | $144,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA FOUNDATION | $51,250 |
| CITY OF CEDAR FALLS | $25,080 |
| COMMUNITY MAIN STREET INC | $8,358 |
| HELEN HANSEN ELEMENTARY PTA | $6,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $39k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 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 +39% since the first grant, against -28% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 5 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, 97% 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2025 · $394k · revenue +43%
- CMCOMMUNITY MAIN STREET INC5× · 2019–2025 · $288k · revenue +39% · 40% of their budget
- EPEXCEPTIONAL PERSONS INC3× · 2021–2024 · $39k · revenue +7%
Funded once
THE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $23k · revenue +63%- CFCEDAR FALLS PICKLEBALL CLUBone grant, 2023 · $13k
- RCROTARY CLUB OF CEDAR FALLS CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $10k · revenue -69%
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.
The cedar falls community foundation inspires and connects individuals, families, and organizations to enhance our community, support non-profits, elevate educational opportunities, and build legacies through philanthropy.
The community foundation for western iowa is dedicated to creating a lasting legacy in our region by engaging our citizens and communities for durable change and fostering a culture of philanthropy. this is where giving grows.
Provide financial support to and promote excellence in cedar rapids public schools. through funding of projects and programs, the foundation works to enhance the educational experience of students in the public schools.
The greater cedar rapids community foundation (the community foundation) partners with donors, funders, and other community collaborators to achieve high-impact philanthropy, supports nonprofit organizations that address our community's…
The foundation for the iowa city community school district connects the community with our schools to ensure every student has extraordinary learning experiences. together we empower teachers and district staff and inspire students to…
Provision of christ centered education with scholastic excellence.
To support programs of orchestra iowa inc. and its affiliates.
The foundation mobilizes resources and relationships that empower our library to deliver innovative programs and services.
Raise funds to support area school district.
To further the development of Clear Lake, IA and the surrounding area for its citizens.
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…
Provide a lean, straightforward, and transparent conduit vehicle to those who wish to contribute resources for the betterment of the greater waterloo, iowa community and its citizens.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Cedar Falls Schools Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Beaus Beautiful Blessings Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
16 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. 16 of the 19 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 UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY MAIN STREET INC ↗
- Who funds CEDAR FALLS HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds EXCEPTIONAL PERSONS INC ↗
- Who funds CEDAR FALLS SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WATERLOO COMMUNITY SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE CEDAR VALLEY CANCER COMMITTEE ↗
- Who funds THE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CEDAR FALLS COMMUNITY THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds ROTARY CLUB OF CEDAR FALLS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STURGIS FALLS CELEBRATION INC ↗
- Who funds CEDAR VALLEY PRESCHOOL & CHILD CARE CENTER ↗
- Who funds Beaus Beautiful Blessings Inc ↗
- Who funds SOUTHDALE IMPACT ↗
- Who funds NORTH STAR COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Helen Hansen Elementary PTA ↗
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: Max and Helen Guernsey Charitable Foundation · Black Hawk County Gaming Association · Lsb Foundation · Otto Schoitz Foundation · Van G Miller Family Charitable Foundation · Cedar Valley United Way · American Online Giving 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 Cedar Falls Community 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.