· Private foundation
Gwendolyn L Stearns Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k28 grants · $417k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FEEDING SOUTH DAKOTA | $25,000 |
| ADULT DAY CENTER OF THE BLACK HILLS | $25,000 |
| SEVENTH CIRCUIT CASA PROGRAM | $20,000 |
| LIFEWAYS INC | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| RURAL AMERICA INITIATIVES | $20,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| JOURNEY ON INC | $20,000 |
| KIWANIS | $18,500 |
| PASSAGES WOMENS TRANSITIONAL LIVING | $15,000 |
| CATHOLIC SOCIAL SERVICES | $15,000 |
| CONSUMER CREDIT COUNSELING | $15,000 |
| WESTERN SOUTH DAKOTA SENIOR SERVICE | $15,000 |
| ALLIANCE FOR SUBSTANCE ABUSE PREVEN | $15,000 |
| LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF SD FOUN | $15,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $104k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +43% since the first grant, against -19% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2024, 18 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $45k 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
- FSFEEDING SOUTH DAKOTA7× · 2017–2024 · $220k · revenue +28%
- LILIFEWAYS INC7× · 2017–2024 · $165k · revenue +89%
- RARURAL AMERICA INITIATIVES8× · 2017–2024 · $150k · revenue +12%
Funded once
- RCRAPID CITY PUBLIC PARKS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2017 · $10k
- SKSPARE KEYone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue -19%
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.
Health care services for the people of western nebraska and eastern wyoming.
Together, we create a warm and welcoming community enriching the lives of those we support.
Our mission is to break the cycle of addiction and trauma for women, children, and families.
Southeastern north dakota community action agency (sendcaa) was formed in 1965 to provide a range of services and activities in a six county area designed to alleviate poverty and give low-income people the opportunity to improve their…
Sd voices for peace provides five programming areas to assist vulnerable communities access services throughout the state: legal services, multilingual outreach, training and education, advocacy and civic engagement and rapid response.
Providing innovative and life-enriching services for children, adolescents, and adults with disabilities.
We promote independence and an enhanced quality of life for adults with serious mental illness.
Offering help for today and inspiring hope for tomorrow through outstanding personalized care, support and education.
To assist disabled individuals
Children's home society of south dakota is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing trauma-informed services to children and families impacted by abuse, neglect, domestic violence, and mental health challenges. our mission is to…
Lifeworks' mission is to partner with people with disabilities to drive change by increasing opportunity and access in the community.
Advancing healthy communities through a unified voice across the health care continuum.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Black Hills Works Inc and the most unlike its peers is Front Porch Coalition. 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 44 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 52 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 FEEDING SOUTH DAKOTA ↗
- Who funds LIFEWAYS INC ↗
- Who funds RURAL AMERICA INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds ADULT DAY CENTER OF THE BLACK HILLS ↗
- Who funds WORKING AGAINST VIOLENCE INC ↗
- Who funds CORNERSTONE RESCUE MISSION ↗
- Who funds ALLIED ARTS FUND DRIVE INC ↗
- Who funds RAPID CITY CLUB FOR BOYS INC ↗
- Who funds WELLSPRING INC ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS - DAKOTA HORIZONS ↗
- Who funds YOUTH & FAMILY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds WESTERN SOUTH DAKOTA SENIOR SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK HILLS WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds PASSAGES WOMEN'S TRANSITIONAL LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds Journey On Inc ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF SD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BLACK HILLS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RAPID CITY Y M C A ↗
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: Black Hills Area Community Foundation · South Dakota Community Foundation · United Way of the Black Hills · Midcontinent Foundation · Synchrony Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Larson Foundation · Clarkson Family Foundation Pioneer Bank & Trust Trustee · American Gift Fund · John T Vucurevich Foundation · Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation Inc · Dakota Charitable 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 Gwendolyn L Stearns Foundation Inc 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 Gwendolyn L Stearns Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Gwendolyn L Stearns Foundation Inc 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.