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Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action Fund

The mission of IOWA CITIZENS FOR COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT ACTION FUND is to build economic, racial, and environmental justice and grassroots democracy through community organizing, education, advocacy, and electoral politics in iowa and across the country.

$20k
Granted FY2023
1
Grants FY2023
1
States reached
$20k
Largest
01What you fund
01100% classified

What you funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY20202023.

Civil Rights$200kEnvironment$59kPublic Benefit$29kEmployment$20k
02FY2023 · 1 grant

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

$20,000
Median grant
1
States reached
$1.2M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
DES MOINES BLACK LIBERATION COLLECTIVE$20,000
02The need
03

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY20–20, $14k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%URBAN DREAMS: $14k → 10%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

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.

03Your field

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.

1
The Interfaith Alliance Foundation Inc

Interfaith alliance is a growing network of people of diverse faiths and beliefs across the country working together to build a resilient democracy and fulfill america's promise of religious freedom and civil rights not just for some, but…

Religion
2
Greater Des Moines Partnership Foundation
Philanthropy
3
Iowans for Ukrainians
Philanthropy
4
Lavender Legal Center

Public interest law firm

Crime & Legal
5
Des Moines Black Liberation Movement Collective dba Dsm Blm Collective

The Des Moines Black Liberation Movement (DSM BLM Collective) was formally incorporated on October 3, 2021, though its roots trace back to the days following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The organization was founded to…

6
Great Plains Action Society

We address the trauma that indigenous peoples and the earth face and work to prevent further colonial capitalist violence by fighting for and building power in indigenous communities through rematriation, healing justice and bringing in a…

Civil Rights
7
One Iowa Action

One iowa action, the state's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) advocacy organization, is dedicated to supporting full equality for lgbt individuals living in iowa through grassroots organizing and advocacy.

Civil Rights
8
Alliance for a Better Iowa

To bring about civic betterments and social improvements by advocating for public policies that further social and racial justice, affordable health care, equitable taxation, quality education, a healthy climate, and other changes…

Civil Rights
9
Des Moines Area Association of Realtors Foundation
Education
10
Interfaith Voices for Repro

Education and Advocacy We are an Organization of Interfaith and Progressive voices dedicated to affirming the moral authority of black women and girls

Civil Rights
11
Iowa City Area Development Group Inc

The organization promotes, develops and advances the business community in iowa city and the surrounding area. in addition, the organization connects business and industry with federal, state and local resources to enable and stimulate…

12
Indiana Recovery Alliance Inc

The IRA shifts resources and power to people who use drugs. We reduce both the individual and structural harms caused by racialized drug policy through direct action and advocacy.

Health

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Indigenous Iowa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Americans for Democratic Action Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

04the grantee network

8 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 20172025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 8 of the 10 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.

1
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/8
Grantees still filing
2/8
Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

INDIGENOUS IOWA INC — $59,000 · OtherINDIGENOUS IOWA INCDES MOINES BLACK LIBERATION MOVEMENT FOUNDATION dba DSM BLM Foundation — $44,000 · OtherDES MOINES BLACK LIBERATION MOVEMENT FOUNDATION dba DSM BL…DES MOINES BLACK LIBERATION COLLECTIVE — $20,000 · OtherDES MOINES BLACK LIBERATION COLLECTIVEIOWA CITY CATHOLIC WORKER URBAN AND RURAL LAND TRUST — $20,000 · OtherIOWA CITY CATHOLIC WORKER URBAN AND RURAL LAND TRUSTQUAD CITIES INTERFAITH — $15,000 · OtherQUAD CITIES INTERFAITHPEOPLE'S ACTION INSTITUTE — $80,591 · Community ImprovementPEOPLE'S ACTION INSTITUTEAdvocates for Social Justice Inc — $30,000 · Civil RightsAdvocates f…AMERICANS FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION INC — $15,000 · Public BenefitURBAN DREAMS — $14,000 · Human ServicesINTERFAITH ALLIANCE OF IOWA — $10,000 · Religion
Other$158,000Community Improvement$80,591Civil Rights$30,000Public Benefit$15,000Human Services$14,000Religion$10,000

Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$100k$1.0M$10Mgrantee revenue →↑ your share of their budgetPEOPLE'S ACTION INSTITUTE — $80,591 over 1y, 0.5% of budgetINDIGENOUS IOWA INC — $59,000 over 1y, 12% of budgetAdvocates for Social Justice Inc — $30,000 over 1y, 35% of budgetAMERICANS FOR DEMOCRATIC ACTION INC — $15,000 over 1y, 8.2% of budgetQUAD CITIES INTERFAITH — $15,000 over 1y, 7.5% of budgetURBAN DREAMS — $14,000 over 1y, 1.1% of budgetINTERFAITH ALLIANCE OF IOWA — $10,000 over 1y, 3.3% of budget
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.

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.

Iowa Citizens for Community ImprovementIA14.1× affinity4 shared granteesties to 1 of 1Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement · 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 Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action Fund 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.

2022
202122232425
no gov · 00%6%25%56%100%your 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
    1report 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, FY2025

    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.

    04Through Plinth

    Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

    How do I get to Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action Fund?

    Find your warmest path to Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement Action 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 directly from IRS e-file XML — your own 990/990-PF and the multi-year returns of the 10 grantees we resolved across every year we hold, several hundred filings in all (a different count from the grant rows on the cover, which are one fiscal year)— each linked to its source. Grantee achievements and outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III); we read these as association with sustained funding — the foundation is one of several forces — suppress low-confidence name matches rather than guess, and say so where a figure rests on a single grant or filing. Not everything on this page is a filed figure, and the difference matters. Filed is what you reported on your 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. How we build these →

    Generated from your IRS Form 990 e-file return for fiscal year 2023, released 2023. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Possibly out of date. A more recent filing (FY2024) is on record and reports no grant expense, so the figures above are from FY2023, the most recent year this funder made grants.

    Source object · view filing

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