· Private foundation
Charles D Ortgiesen Foundation Inc
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k17 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST MARCUS SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM INC | $10,000 |
| MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC | $8,500 |
| MILWAUKEE REPERTORY THEATER | $8,000 |
| LIFESTRIDERS | $5,000 |
| MILWAUKEE RESCUE MISSION | $3,000 |
| FIRST STAGE | $2,500 |
| WELLPOINT CARE NETWORK | $2,000 |
| LITERACY SERVICES OF MILWAUKEE | $2,000 |
| FRIENDS OF BOERNER BOTANICAL GARDENS | $2,000 |
| RISEN SAVIOR YOUTH SERVICES | $2,000 |
| MILWAUKEE BALLET | $1,500 |
| URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER | $1,500 |
| CENTER FOR DEAF-BLIND PERSONS | $1,500 |
| RENAISSANCE THEATERWORKS | $1,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $28k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
35 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 17 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; $2k 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
MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM INC9× · 2017–2025 · $78k · revenue +20%
MILWAUKEE REPERTORY THEATER INC9× · 2017–2025 · $69k · revenue +91%- FOFRIENDS OF BOERNER BOTANICAL GARDENS INC8× · 2017–2025 · $13k · revenue +32%
Funded once
ST AUGUSTINE PREPARATORY ACADEMY INCgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $5k · revenue +39%
INDEPENDENCE FIRST INCone grant, 2017 · $3k · revenue -20%
VISION FORWARD ASSOCIATION INCORPORATEDone grant, 2020 · $3k · revenue -7%
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 reach a new generation of radio listeners on air, online and in the community with a compelling selection of music and public affairs programming. the corporation celebrates milwaukee music, arts, heritage, and culture by supporting and…
Making the arts accessible to all
The museum of wisconsin art celebrates the value, diversity, and uniqueness of the visual arts and artists of wisconsin. this is achieved by collecting, conserving, documenting, exhibiting, and promoting aesthetic understanding of the…
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
To promote interests and effectiveness of the nonprofit sector through strengthening organizational capacity, expanding volunteerism and encouraging collaboration.
Montessori institute teaches and develops programs to montessori instructors to educate them as to montessori teaching methods
The mission of the organization is to provide a high quality education for all students with choices after graduation that will provide financial stability, inspire personal freedom to builda legacy.
Milwaukee women inc is an organization of executives determined to change the quality and composition of corporate boards to maximize the performance of public and private companies with a focus on women and women of color.
The milwaukee community service corps (mcsc) is a non-profit vocational training organization providing employment, education and life skills to training youth adults and unemployed and underemployed of milwaukee, wisconsin.
Engage our community in supporting milwaukee county parks to collectively steward a thriving park system.
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
Milwaukee water commons is helping catalyze milwaukee as a true model water city-a place where we all have a stake in the health of our waters and all share in their stewardship and benefits. we are advancing our community envisioned water…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is First Stage Milwaukee and the most unlike its peers is Milwaukee Youth Theatre Inc. 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 54 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 12% 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.
44 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. 44 of the 53 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 MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE REPERTORY THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST STAGE MILWAUKEE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BOERNER BOTANICAL GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds NEXT DOOR FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FLORENTINE OPERA COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE BALLET COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds WELLPOINT CARE NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds RENAISSANCE THEATERWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds LITERACY SERVICES OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR DEAF-BLIND PERSONS INC ↗
- Who funds ALMA CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE HOUSE OF MILWAUKEE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds CURATIVE CARE NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds LIFESTRIDERS INC ↗
- Who funds SERENITY INNS INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds ST ANN CENTER FOR INTERGENERATIONAL CARE ↗
- Who funds SKYLIGHT MUSIC THEATRE CORP ↗
- Who funds BENEDICT CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CATHEDRAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ST AUGUSTINE PREPARATORY ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE COUNTY WAR MEMORIAL INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE CENTER FOR INDEPENDENCE INC ↗
- Who funds SCHOOLS THAT CAN MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds OUR NEXT GENERATION INC ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY WORLD LTD ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENCE FIRST INC ↗
- Who funds VISION FORWARD ASSOCIATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE OF MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 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: Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Evan & Marion Helfaer Foundation · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Gardner Foundation · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Ralph Evinrude Foundation Inc · Anon Charitable Trust · Youth Foundation Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Dorothy Inbusch Foundation Inc · Joseph and Vera Zilber Family Foundation Inc
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 Charles D Ortgiesen Foundation 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Charles D Ortgiesen Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Charles D Ortgiesen Foundation Inc 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.