· Private foundation
Gabus 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
- $10k–50k3 grants · $50k
- $50k–250k7 grants · $450k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MEALS ON WHEELS | $125,000 |
| CITY OF URBANDALE | $75,000 |
| FREEDOM FOR YOUTH MINISTRIES | $50,000 |
| FOOD BANK OF IOWA | $50,000 |
| ELLIPSIS | $50,000 |
| EASTER SEALS IOWA | $50,000 |
| WILDWOOD HILLS RANCH | $50,000 |
| PUPPY JAKE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| FREESTORE INC | $15,000 |
| CAN PLAY | $10,000 |
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, $306k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 95% 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 +38% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 10 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; $15k 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
- FFFREEDOM FOR YOUTH MINISTRIES4× · 2017–2025 · $300k · revenue +47%
- FBFOOD BANK OF IOWA5× · 2020–2025 · $250k · revenue +42%
- EIELLIPSIS INC4× · 2022–2025 · $200k · revenue +38%
Funded once
- ESEASTER SEAL SOCIETY OF IOWA INCone grant, 2018 · $50k · revenue +23%
- GIGREAT IOWA OUTDOORS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $40k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2017 · $25k
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 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 shelter and services to families experiencing homelessness
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.
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 eliminate hunger in south dakota.
Unite the caring power of communities to invest in effective solutions to improve people's lives.
The mission of Iowa Policy Project is to promote public policy that fosters economic opportunity while safeguarding the health and well-being of Iowa's people and the environment. By providing a foundation of fact-based, objective research…
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.
Variety - the children's charity of iowa is dedicated to improving the lives of children who are at risk, underprivileged, critically ill, or living with special needs.
Promoting policies to the general public and policy makers related to clean energy, energy efficiency, and the energy sector.
Our mission is to help nonprofits fulfill theirs.
Iris delivers equal access to information and the arts. through our 24/7 audio signal of print material read aloud and audio desc services the volunteer voices of iris keep print-disabled iowans connected.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Iowa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Simon Estes Foundation. 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 22 years old; the field is 55. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 8% 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 4% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 36 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 FREEDOM FOR YOUTH MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds ELLIPSIS INC ↗
- Who funds SCKIC Inc ↗
- Who funds GREAT OUTDOORS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES METRO OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds WILDWOOD HILLS INC ↗
- Who funds PUPPY JAKE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAN PLAY ↗
- Who funds URBANDALE FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds EASTER SEAL SOCIETY OF IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds Friends of the Grimes Public Library ↗
- Who funds RHYTHMS OF GRACE ↗
- Who funds SIMON ESTES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FREESTORE ↗
- Who funds HOSPICE OF CENTRAL IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds FURRY FRIENDS REFUGE ↗
- Who funds EVERYBODY WINS - IOWA ↗
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 West Bancorporation Foundation Inc · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · Ita Group Foundation · EMC Insurance Foundation · Variety - the Children's Charity of Iowa · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · R & R Realty Group Foundation · Meredith Corporation Foundation · Pella Rolscreen Foundation · Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust
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 Gabus 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 Gabus Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Gabus 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.