· Private foundation
ESP International Charitable Foundation
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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $2,700 |
| Texas Search and Rescue | $2,500 |
| Project Linus | $2,393 |
| Mercy Medical Center Foundation | $2,046 |
| Sleep in Heavenly Peace | $1,500 |
| Hawkeye Area Down Syndrome Association (HADSA) | $1,000 |
| Cedar Rapids Firefighters Foundation | $1,000 |
| Hope Blooms | $1,000 |
| The ALS Association | $1,000 |
| Family Service of the Piedmont | $518 |
| Individual grant recipient | $501 |
| Iowa Donor Network | $500 |
| National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) North Carolina | $500 |
| Freedom Foundation | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $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 (FY18–25, $41k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 16% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 84% of ESP International Charitable Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 81% of the giving stays in IA; read by stated purpose it is 15% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +9% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
23 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 37 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, 35% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $18k 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
- WSWAYPOINT SERVICES3× · 2018–2024 · $26k · revenue +64%
- WDWILLIS DADY EMERGENCY SHELTER INC7× · 2018–2025 · $11k · revenue +140%
- PLPROJECT LINUS2× · 2024–2025 · $3k · revenue +19%
Funded once
- MFMAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF IOWA INCone grant, 2023 · $22k · revenue +6%
- HFHABITAT FOR HUMANITY CEDAR VALLEYone grant, 2021 · $19k
- CVCEDAR VALLEY HUMANE SOCIETYgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $18k · revenue +120%
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.
Idaho Animal Rescue Network is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based in Idaho that works in Idaho and Eastern Washington to educate, advocate, and network with other rescues and law enforcement in Idaho regarding animal cruelty and neglect. We are…
Connecting families affected by childhood cancer by providing opportunities that encourage relationships and strengthen community.
Animal lifeline is a special needs no kill animal shelter that helps dogs & cats that are abused, seriously ill, handicapped, pregnant & nursing moms, orphan babies that need to be bottle fed & abandoned. we provide vet care, surgery,…
The purpose of the Friends of the Animal Center Foundation is to raise funds to support and expand the animal care services at the Iowa City Animal Care and Adoption Center, and to support other animal welfare initiatives in our community.
The organization's mission is to address the immediate needs of sick, injured, and orphaned wild birds, with the goal to return them to the wild and help educate and bring awareness to the global issue that birds are dissappearing at an…
To provide temporary shelter, food, medical attention, and comfort to displaced and neglected companion animals and educate the public about the humane care of animals with the goal of reducing overpopulation.
Our mission is to rescue abandoned, homeless, abused, neglected and otherwise unwanted dogs and cats, with the ultimate goal of finding each one a stable and loving forever home
Rescue, care, and find homes for abandoned and/or abused animals.
The iowa city va medical research foundation's (icvarf) mission is to mobilize resources that help improve veterans' healthcare, education, and lives. based in iowa city, a hub of research and health care in the midwest, the foundation…
We save the lives of companion animals in need -- including those who are homeless abandoned neglected or at risk. Through compassion kindness and care we help them heal and thrive ultimately becoming cherished family members in loving…
None
Noahs Hope Animal Rescue accepts unwanted and street animals; restores health and then places the animals in homes around the metro Siouxland area.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Waypoint Services and the most unlike its peers is Alburnett Community School District 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 22 years old; the field is 38. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 6% 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.
59 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. 59 of the 109 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 WAYPOINT SERVICES ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds CEDAR VALLEY HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WILLIS DADY EMERGENCY SHELTER INC ↗
- Who funds CASA OF TARRANT COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY - QUAD CITIES INC ↗
- Who funds LEWISVILLE HS ACTIVITIES BOOSTER CLUB ↗
- Who funds HOPE HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds PROJECT LINUS ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF NORTH CAROLINA ↗
- Who funds HAGARS HEART ↗
- Who funds SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds MARC LUSTGARTEN PANCREATIC CANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Freedom Foundation ↗
- Who funds IOWA GIVING CREW ↗
- Who funds HAWKEYE AREA COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILIES HELPING FAMILIES ↗
- Who funds AIMING FOR A CURE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NAMI Linn County ↗
- Who funds THE 180 ZONE ↗
- Who funds THE SUICIDE AND CRISIS CENTER OF NORTH TEXAS ↗
- Who funds Critter Crusaders of Cedar Rapids Inc ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE OF THE PIEDMONT 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 Cedar Rapids Community Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · The Accel Foundation · Rohde Family Charitable Foundation · United Fire Group Foundation · United Way of East Central Iowa · Hawkeye Area Community Action Program Inc · First Federal Credit Union Foundation · The Hall-Perrine Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · GreenState Credit Union · Maurice Paul and Glennys Brimmer 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 ESP International 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.