· Private foundation
Donlan 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
66% of Donlan Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Lincoln Community Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 14 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2019, the last year Donlan Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 26 organizations, $229k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2019
- Under $10k30 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $125k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $59k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| LINCOLN PARKS FOUNDATION | $58,500 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $40,000 |
| VOICES OF HOPE | $35,000 |
| WICHITA ART MUSEUM | $20,000 |
| MOURNING HOPE GRIEF CENTER | $10,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF THE HEARTLAND | $10,000 |
| MADONNA FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS | $5,000 |
| NEBRASKA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| LINCOLN LITERACY | $3,720 |
| FRESH STARTINC | $2,500 |
| LIGHTHOUSE FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| FRIENDSHIP HOME | $2,500 |
| FOOD BANK OF LINCOLN | $2,500 |
| PEOPLE'S CITY MISSION | $2,500 |
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 (FY22–22, $35k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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 +38% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
41 repeat relationships — 31 still active in FY2019, 10 since wound down; 19 grantees were first funded in FY2019 (too recent to call). Read against FY2019, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 45% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $51k 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
- TMTHE MADONNA FOUNDATION6× · 2017–2022 · $309k · revenue +87%
- LLLINCOLN LITERACY COUNCIL7× · 2018–2024 · $179k · revenue +322%
- NWNEBRASKA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY7× · 2017–2025 · $71k · revenue +21%
Funded once
- CICENTERPOINTE INCone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue -10%
- TSTHE SOLIDAGO CONSERVANCYone grant, 2025 · $50k
- PPPLANNED PARENTHOOD NORTH CENTRAL STATESone grant, 2022 · $40k
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 lincoln children's museum invites children to create, discover and learn through the power of play.
To foster the protection of agricultural, historical and natural resources on land in nebraska through education, partnering and permanent conservation.
Lincoln college uniquely empowers students to realize their full potential
The mission of the urban league of nebraska is to be an empowering voice in the community advocating for economic self-reliance, parity, power, civil rights and equal opportunity for all (see schedule o). the vision of the urban league of…
To help young children thrive socially, emotionally and academically through high-quality early childhood education, and in partnership with their families and the community.
The nebraska community foundation unleashes abundant local assets, inspires charitable giving, and connects ambitious people to build stronger communities and a greater nebraska.
To promote, facilitate and develop or co-develop affordable housing in lincoln county, nebraska.
For over 50 years in nebraska, the aclu has worked in courts, legislatures, and communities to protect the constitutional and individual rights of all people. with a nationwide network of offices and millions of members and supporters,…
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
The council of indepependent nebraska colleges foundation exists to provide operating funds and scholarship support for students attending nebraska's independent institutions of excellence.
Cultivating and stewarding charitable gifts to support lincoln land community college students, programs and services.
The mission of the nebraska state bar association (nsba) is "helping lawyers help people." the nebraska state bar association works for nebraska lawyers to help them achieve the highest standards of competence, ethics and professionalism…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Arc of Lincoln and the most unlike its peers is Minnesouri Scholarship 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 45 years old; the field is 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 15% 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 8% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 62 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 Lincoln Community Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE MADONNA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN LITERACY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds CENTERPOINTE INC ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds AUDUBON OF KANSAS INC ↗
- Who funds THE SOLIDAGO CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds WICHITA FAMILY CRISIS CENTER ↗
- Who funds HOPESPOKE ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF THE HEARTLAND INC ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN CHILDREN'S ZOO ↗
- Who funds VOICES FOR CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds Wichita Art Museum Inc ↗
- Who funds FOLLOW YOUR DREAM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LUX CENTER FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds UNITED CEREBRAL PALSY OF NE INC ↗
- Who funds WOODS TENNIS AND EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS SPIRIT OF NEBRASKA ↗
- Who funds BONE CREEK ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds MOURNING HOPE ↗
- Who funds DENVER ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds JUST ASSOCIATES INC ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF NEBRASKA ART ↗
- Who funds NOVA UKRAINE ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE'S CITY MISSION ↗
- Who funds SENIORS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF LINCOLN INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDSHIP HOME OF LINCOLN INC ↗
- Who funds LIGHTHOUSE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC SOCIAL SERVICES ↗
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: Lincoln Community Foundation Inc · Cooper Foundation · Abel Foundation · Assurity Life Foundation · The Sherwood Foundation · United Way of Lincoln and Lancaster County · D F Dillon Foundation · James Stuart III Family Foundation · Kinder Porter Scott Family Foundation · Rogers Foundation · Lee and Debbie Stuart Family Foundation · Acklie Charitable 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 Donlan 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 Donlan Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Donlan 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.