· Private foundation
Iowa Lakes Electric Members Charitable Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 88% of IOWA LAKES ELECTRIC MEMBERS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DICKENS FIRE AND RESCUE | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| DISCOVERY HOUSE INC | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| PALO ALTO COUNTY CONSERVATION BOARD | $5,000 |
| HUDSONS CREW | $4,000 |
| REGIONAL WELLNESS CENTER | $4,000 |
| SWEA CITY IMPROVEMENT LEAGUE | $4,000 |
| CLAY COUNTY AG EXTENSION | $3,000 |
| EXCEL ESTHERVILLE | $3,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| ROYAL AMERICAN LEGION POST #248 | $3,000 |
| POCAHONTAS COUNTY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION | $2,800 |
| ESTHERVILLE LITTLE LEAGUE ASSOCIATION | $2,500 |
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 (FY19–24, $16k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 84% 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 +38% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 6 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 15 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, 27% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $54k 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
- IGIndividual grant recipient2× · 2021–2025 · $13k
- PAPALO ALTO COUNTY CONSERVATION BOARD2× · 2019–2025 · $10k
- AKAURELIA KIWANIS CLUB2× · 2019–2024 · $10k
Funded once
- LCLAKOTA COMMUNITY FIRE COMPANYone grant, 2024 · $10k
- CCCHEROKEE COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $7k · revenue -77%
- EMEMMETSBURG MAIN STREET COMMUNITY THEATERone grant, 2020 · $6k
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.
Preservation of union county iowa hisorical information and artifacts.
To preserve and celebrate the rich story of northwest iowa's dutch immigrant history and culture.
To maintain, improve and restore 3 historical properties
To provide a county fair for rural iowa
Dchv connects modern generations to the past rural life & agricultural heritage in dakota cty through living history interpretation, education, & collection, preservation, & exhibition of information, objects & buildings.
Restoration and display of historical items pertinent to fremont county, iowa
Preservation of historical building which is part of the rich heritage of catholic roots in this part of keokuk county, iowa
County museum- mission is to derive and maintain the historical accuracy of floyd county, ia
Owns and operates the jasper county historical museum which collects, preserves and exhibits artifacts
Promotion of and presentation of dramatic arts
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Cherokee Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Cherokee Day Care Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 12 years old; the field is 33. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 12% startups (under 5 years old) — 16% of your grantees by number, and just 20% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 4% 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.
22 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 22 of the 160 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.
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: Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Arthur W & Audrey F Smith Foundatio · Good Neighbor Fund-Spirit Lake · Land O'Lakes Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Lakes Electric Members Charitable 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.
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How do I get to Iowa Lakes Electric Members Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Iowa Lakes Electric Members Charitable 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.