· Private foundation
Hills Bancorporation Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k14 grants · $75k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $47k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY SCHOOL FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| THE HISTORY CENTER | $12,000 |
| THE IOWA CITY BIKE LIBRARY | $10,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF THE COORIDOR | $8,000 |
| GIRL SCOUTS OF EASTERN IOWA & WESTERN ILLINOIS | $7,500 |
| FILMSCENE | $7,500 |
| BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA HAWKEYE AREA COUNCIL | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA | $5,000 |
| IOWA JOBS FOR AMERICAS GRADUATES (IJAG) | $5,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA DANCE MARATHON | $5,000 |
| IC PUBLIC LIBRARY FRIENDS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| SAFETY VILLAGE OF JOHNSON COUNTY | $5,000 |
| EASTERN IOWA ARTS ACADEMY | $5,000 |
| MIRACLES IN MOTION | $3,000 |
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, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Hills Bancorporation 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, 100% of the giving stays in IA; read by stated purpose it is 85% — 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 +101% since the first grant, against +39% for the ones you funded once.
26 repeat relationships — 13 still active in FY2024, 13 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $26k 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
- CRCEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $175k · revenue +101%
- FFILMSCENE8× · 2017–2024 · $55k · revenue +150%
- EIEastern Iowa Arts Academy8× · 2017–2024 · $48k · revenue +121%
Funded once
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBone grant, 2023 · $8k
- BOBUR OAK LAND TRUSTgraduatedone grant, 2018 · $6k · revenue +50%
- FOFOUR OAKS FAMILY AND CHILDREN'S SERVICESgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $5k · revenue +32%
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.
Provision of christ centered education with scholastic excellence.
The foundation is organized to further the growth and development of private colleges and universities of higher education in iowa.
The university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
Founded in 1995 as the philanthropic arm of the iowa credit union league and guided by the credit union philosophy of "people helping people", the iowa credit union foundation (the foundation) works to champion financial well-being for…
Our mission is to inspire the iowa city area to be greater by: 1) elevating business, 2) investing in strategic initiatives, and 3) advocating for the economic resiliency of the greater community.
To deliver programs and to conduct research for the benefit of students, educators, emerging leaders and employers that expand their knowledge and enhance their individual responsibility and leadership skills.
To empower central iowa youth with an entrepreneurial mindset, financial capability and foundation for career success so that they can creat a bright and fulfilling future.
To excite, engage and educate through the arts.
To promote the common business interests of member companies without profit and without the inuring of income to the benefit of any member company or individual. to present the executive, legislative, judicial and regulatory bodies…
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.
Aligning donor passion and generosity to advance iowa state university's land grant ideals.
The iowa scholarship fund solicits gifts to provide financial support exclusively for scholarships (tuition, room, board, and fees) to students who participate in intercollegiate athletics at the university of iowa.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Foundation for the Iowa City Community School District and the most unlike its peers is Clear Creek Amana Community School 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 40 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 43 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 CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FILMSCENE ↗
- Who funds Eastern Iowa Arts Academy ↗
- Who funds HAWKEYE AREA COUNCIL BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA ↗
- Who funds LINN-MAR SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LINN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CEDAR RAPIDS PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IOWA JOBS FOR AMERICA'S GRADUATES INC ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF EASTERN IOWA AND WESTERN ILLINOIS INC ↗
- Who funds FAITH ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CZECH & SLOVAK MUSEUM & LIBRARY INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE CORRIDOR ↗
- Who funds MIRACLES IN MOTION THERAPEUTIC EQUESTRIAN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BUR OAK LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE KERNELS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOUR OAKS FAMILY AND CHILDREN'S SERVICES ↗
- Who funds MOUNT VERNON COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RIVERSIDE THEATRE CO ↗
- Who funds SAFETY VILLAGE OF JOHNSON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR THE TRADES ↗
- Who funds MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT CENTER OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR THE IOWA CITY COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT ↗
- Who funds HEARTLAND YOUTH FOR CHRIST 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: GreenState Credit Union · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation · The Kenneth K Kinsey Family Foundation · Hills Bank Donor Advised Gift Fund · Community Foundation of Johnson County · Midwestone Bank Foundation · John P & Lawrence J Giacoletto Fnd · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · United Fire Group Foundation · The Accel Foundation · Greenstate 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 Hills Bancorporation 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 Hills Bancorporation Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Hills Bancorporation 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.