· 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 $10k59 grants · $223k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FEEDING AMERICA EASTERN WISCONSIN | $10,000 |
| HUNGER TASK FORCE INC | $8,500 |
| GRAND AVENUE CLUB | $7,500 |
| MILWAUKEE RESCUE MISSION | $7,000 |
| PATHFINDERS | $7,000 |
| WALKERS POINT YOUTH & FAMILY CENTER | $6,000 |
| MILWAUKEE INSTITUTE OF ARTS & DESIG | $5,600 |
| WISCONSIN CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC | $5,500 |
| ALVERNO COLLEGE | $5,000 |
| WISCONSIN LUTHER CHILD & FAMILY SER | $5,000 |
| LA CAUSA INC | $5,000 |
| THE GUEST HOUSE OF MILWAUKEE | $5,000 |
| REPAIRERS OF THE BREACH | $5,000 |
| ASCENSION WISCONSIN FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF SE WI | $5,000 |
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, $196k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, 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.
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.
91 repeat relationships — 53 still active in FY2025, 38 since wound down; 7 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, 89% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
HUNGER TASK FORCE INC9× · 2017–2025 · $65k · revenue +70%
FEEDING AMERICA EASTERN WISCONSIN INC8× · 2017–2025 · $62k · revenue +49%- AWASCENSION WISCONSIN FOUNDATION INC9× · 2017–2025 · $45k · revenue +313%
Funded once
- PMPABST MANSION INCgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $8k · revenue +96%
- CUCONCORDIA UNIVERSITY INCone grant, 2023 · $4k · revenue 0%
HIGHLAND COMMUNITY SCHOOL INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $4k · revenue +33%
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.
Making the arts accessible to all
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.
ArtWorks mission is preparing youth for tomorrow by providing transferable career skills through arts internships today. More than 1,450 high school students have completed ArtWorks internships since our inception.
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…
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.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
The mission of employ milwaukee, inc. is to build a strong workforce development system by planning, coordinating, collaborating and monitoring workforce initiatives with businesses, partners and community stakeholders at the local,…
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.
To promote interests and effectiveness of the nonprofit sector through strengthening organizational capacity, expanding volunteerism and encouraging collaboration.
The mission of the milwaukee bar association is to be an inclusive, equitable and diverse organization that serves the interests of the lawyers, judges and the people of milwaukee county by working to promote the professional interests of…
University school of milwaukee cultivates excellence in learning, leadership, and citizenship for prekindergarten through 12th grade students. students are engaged, known, and valued within our passionate independent school community…
Montessori institute teaches and develops programs to montessori instructors to educate them as to montessori teaching methods
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is First Stage Milwaukee and the most unlike its peers is Xalaat Africa Drum & Dance for Life. 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 45 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) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% 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.
92 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. 92 of the 132 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 HUNGER TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds FEEDING AMERICA EASTERN WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds ASCENSION WISCONSIN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND AVENUE CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds PENFIELD CHILDREN'S CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PATHFINDERS MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds META HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE BALLET COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds BEYOND VISION INC ↗
- Who funds HOPE HOUSE OF MILWAUKEE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds HEAR Wisconsin Inc ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE INSTITUTE OF ART & DESIGN INC ↗
- Who funds REPAIRERS OF THE BREACH INC ↗
- Who funds Core El Centro Incorporated ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE POSSIBLE INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds VISION FORWARD ASSOCIATION INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds FIRST STAGE MILWAUKEE ↗
- Who funds SECUREFUTURES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FLORENTINE OPERA COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds BROADSCOPE DISABILITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE CHAMBER THEATRE LTD ↗
- Who funds Optimist Theatre ↗
- Who funds Pearls for Teen Girls Inc ↗
- Who funds WOODLAND PATTERN INC ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY WORLD LTD ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF GREEN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds ARTS AT LARGE 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: Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Evan & Marion Helfaer Foundation · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Ralph Evinrude Foundation Inc · Youth Foundation Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Bert L and Patricia S Steigleder Charitable · Anon Charitable Trust · Dorothy Inbusch Foundation Inc · Weiss Family Foundation · Harri Hoffmann 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 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Gardner Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Gardner 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.