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Howard Memorial Fund at a glance

· Private foundation

Howard Memorial Fund

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$227k
Granted FY2025still arriving
1
Grants FY2025still arriving
1
States reached
$227k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
05Through PlinthRead
01What it funds
0195% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Education$1.0MArts & Culture$39kHuman Services$33kYouth Development$10kHealth$5kRecreation & Sports$1kCrime & Legal$1kOther$0
02FY2025 · 1 grant

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

$226,500
Median grant
1
States reached
$2.4M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
226500$226,500
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 10%226500: $227k → 11%Eastern Star Home of South Dakota: $500 → 12%Demolay: $500 → 13%Assisting Children to Smile: $1k → 14%Emily Kokales co University of Sout: $1k → 20%Northern State University Foundation: $30k → 11%Eastern Star Home of South Dakota: $500 → 12%Demolay: $500 → 13%Assisting Children to Smile: $1k → 14%Aberdeen Community Theatre: $13k → 11%Eastern Star Home of South Dakota Inc: $500 → 12%Demolay: $500 → 13%Assisting Children to Smile: $1k → 14%NSU Foundation: $10k → 11%Eastern Star Home of South Dakota: $500 → 12%Assisting Children to Smile: $1k → 14%NSU Foundation: $10k → 11%Eastern Star Home of South Dakota Inc: $500 → 12%Assisting Children to Smile: $1k → 14%Northern State University: $5k → 11%Northern State University: $5k → 11%Northern State University: $5k → 11%Salvation Army: $5k → 11%Salvation Army: $5k → 11%Northern State University: $5k → 11%Salvation Army: $5k → 11%Salvation Army: $5k → 11%Northern State University: $5k → 11%Salvation Army: $5k → 11%Aberdeen Area Boys & Girls Club: $2k → 11%Aberdeen Area Boys & Girls Club: $2k → 11%Aberdeen Area Boys & Girls Club: $2k → 11%Aberdeen Area Boys and Girls Club: $2k → 11%Aberdeen Area Boys and Girls Club: $2k → 11%Aberdeen Family YMCA: $1k → 11%Aberdeen Family YMCA: $1k → 11%Aberdeen Family YMCA: $1k → 11%Dacotah Prairie Museum Foundation: $1k → 11%Aberdeen Family YMCA: $1k → 11%Aberdeen Family YMCA: $1k → 11%North Plains Hospice: $500 → 11%SPURS Therapeutic Riding: $500 → 11%Jobs Daughters: $500 → 11%SPURS Therapeutic Riding: $500 → 11%SPURS: $500 → 11%Jobs Daughters: $500 → 11%Northern Plains Hospice: $500 → 11%Northern Plains Hospice: $500 → 11%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

WA
ND
MN
WI
SD
IA
CA
MO
NM
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

28%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$318k · 59 repeat orgs$826k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +28% since the first grant, against -41% for those funded once.

59 repeat relationships: 0 still active in FY2025, 59 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

59
187

Total granted

$318k
$599k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+28%
-41%

Still filing today

5%
1%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $227k went to new ones.

50%100%’17’18’19’20’21’24’25
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • NS
    Northern State University
    5× · 2017–2021 · $25k
  • SA
    Salvation Army
    5× · 2017–2021 · $25k
  • NF
    NSU Foundation
    2× · 2019–2020 · $20k

Funded once

  • 2
    200500
    one grant, 2024 · $201k
  • NS
    Northern State University Foundation
    one grant, 2018 · $30k · revenue -41%
  • AC
    Aberdeen Community Theatre
    one grant, 2021 · $13k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

5 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 5 of the 247 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
5/5
Grantees still filing
2/5
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

226500: $226,500 · Other226500200500: $200,500 · Other200500+198 more: $668,500 · Other+198 more
Other$1,095,500

Showing the 200 largest grantees by grant value.

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetNorthern State University Foundation: $30,000 over 1y, 0.1% of budgetBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF ABERDEEN AREA INC: $10,000 over 5y, 0.2% of budgetAberdeen Family YMCA: $5,000 over 5y, 0.0% of budgetEASTERN STAR HOME OF SOUTH DAKOTA INCORPORATED: $2,500 over 5y, 0.0% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds Northern State University Foundation ↗
  • Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF ABERDEEN AREA INC ↗
  • Who funds Aberdeen Family YMCA ↗

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

South Dakota Communit…Charities Aid Foundat…
South Dakota Community FoundationSD13.5× affinity4 shared granteesties to 1 of 1Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: South Dakota Community Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Howard Memorial Fund funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Howard Memorial Fund. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%1%3%4%5%share of the org’s income from government →
    no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
    0get no government money at all
    2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
    0rely on government for over half their income
    ⤢ axis zoomed · 0–5%
    typical government reliance, FY20–25
    How this is measured
    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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.
    05Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Howard Memorial Fund?

    Find your warmest path to Howard Memorial Fund 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.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 247 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Howard Memorial’s filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home