· Private foundation
Gardner 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $28k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $183k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $422k
- $250k+1 grant · $764k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WAYNE STATE FOUNDATION | $764,194 |
| WAYNE STATE FOUNDATION | $171,946 |
| ST PETER'S CATHOLIC CHURCH | $100,000 |
| NEBRASKA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY | $75,000 |
| LITTLE RED HEN THEATRE | $75,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $38,210 |
| Individual grant recipient | $35,000 |
| STANTON COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY | $27,595 |
| HOMER VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT | $19,550 |
| Individual grant recipient | $17,104 |
| PROJECT PINKD INC | $15,000 |
| EMERSON VETERANS MEMORIALPOST 60 | $10,250 |
| HARRISON'S PLAYMAKERS | $10,000 |
| LINDSAY AREA DEVELOPMENT | $10,000 |
| LAUREL-CONCORD-COLERIDGE MIDDLE SCHOOL | $8,294 |
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 (FY18–24, $51k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 47% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
23 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 10 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $183k 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
- LRLITTLE RED HEN THEATRE9× · 2017–2025 · $618k · revenue +127% · 83% of their budget
- NWNEBRASKA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY3× · 2020–2025 · $175k · revenue +11%
- HHHOPEFUL HORIZONS5× · 2017–2021 · $55k · revenue +42%
Funded once
- DCDIXON COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETYone grant, 2024 · $100k · revenue -4% · 37% of their budget
- AFALLEN-WATERBURY FIRE & RESCUEone grant, 2019 · $76k
- HHHAVEN HOUSEone grant, 2018 · $75k
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 mission of the north dakota state fair foundation is to develop lifelong relationships with donors to secure the philanthropic gifts that will enhance and support the work of the north dakota state fair.
The northland foundation supports northeastern minnesota people and communities working toward a future where everyone feels they belong and can thrive.
Our mission is "Partnering to Create a Healthier Community." NorthPoint seeks to reduce health disparities, improve health outcomes, and enhance the overall quality of life for all residents of North Minneapolis
To promote the cause of higher education and the mission of northeast state community college; to expand educational opportunities; and to acquire, manage, and administer foundation funds to achieve those objectives.
The function of the north dakota university system foundation is to support, enrich, advance and improve higher education in the state of north dakota, and to assist its students, faculty and staff.
To provide support to NWOSU and scholarships to NWOSU students
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
The Northampton Community College Foundation, raises, invests and manages private resources for Northampton Community College, it's students, and it's staff.
End hunger together.
To grow hope in our region by creating pathways to nutritious food.
Northland community health center is committed to providing access to affordable and quality health services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Food Bank for the Heartland and the most unlike its peers is Little Red Hen Theatre. 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 18 years old; the field is 25. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 15% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% 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.
20 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. 20 of the 67 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 WAYNE STATE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Providence Medical Center Foundation ↗
- Who funds LITTLE RED HEN THEATRE ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DIXON COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds HOPEFUL HORIZONS ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAMP HIGH HOPES ↗
- Who funds WAKEFIELD HEALTH CARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HARRISONS PLAYMAKERS ↗
- Who funds QUILTS OF VALOR FOUNDATION ↗
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: Edward Jones Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Paypal Charitable Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving 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 Gardner 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.