· Private foundation
Ja Woollam Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k3 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $215k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION | $215,376 |
| SPRING CREEK PRAIRIE AUDUBON | $10,000 |
| WYOMING PUBLIC MEDIA | $5,000 |
| THE NATURE CONSERVANCY | $5,000 |
| SHERIDAN COMMUNITY LAND TRUST | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 51% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 +83% since the first grant, against +40% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2025 · $738k · revenue +70%
- SCSOUTHEAST COMMUNITY COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION7× · 2017–2023 · $158k · revenue +170%
- PLPRETTY LAKE VACATION CAMP INC5× · 2017–2024 · $102k · revenue +111%
Funded once
- LTLittle Traverse Conservancy Incgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue +60%
- NTNEBRASKA TRAILS FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2019 · $100k · revenue -88%
- WAWACHISKA AUDUBON SOCIETY INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $36k · revenue +110%
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.
To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.
The minnesota land trust protects and restores minnesota's most vital natural lands in order to provide wildlife habitat, clean water, outdoor experiences and scenic beauty for generations to come.
The organization is focused on the future of parks, wildlife management and conservation of nebraska.
To protect and preserve lands of natural, ecological, scenic, historic, agricultural, or recreational significance in kansas.
Conservation minnesota's mission is to turn our shared conservation values into state priorities and provide you with the information you need to make decisions for your family, community and future.
Safeguard southern michigan's land and water to support diverse, resilient, and thriving communities - forever
The mission of gtrlc is to protect significant natural, scenic and farm lands and advance land stewardship now and for future generations.
To promote the conservation of natural resources in the state of north dakota
The nantucket conservation foundation owns, protects, and stewards over 9,000 acres of land and coastal shoreline, conserves nantucket's rare and significant natural resources, and engages in impactful ecological research to inform…
Glacial Lakes Conservancy, as a land trust, is a nonprofit organization that, as part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement acquisitions.
To permanently protect and improve natural environments in Mid-Michigan by leading and inspiring actions that conserve vital habitats and waterways for the benefit of our entire community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Nebraska Land Trust Inc and the most unlike its peers is Nebraska Academy of Sciences. 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 35 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 63 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 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST COMMUNITY COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HEADWATERS LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds PRETTY LAKE VACATION CAMP INC ↗
- Who funds Little Traverse Conservancy Inc ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA TRAILS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEBRASKA LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds WACHISKA AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Land Conservancy of West Michigan ↗
- Who funds New Mexico State Univ Fdn Inc ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ARBOR DAY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds KEWEENAW COMMUNITY FOREST COMPANY ↗
- Who funds Lincoln Community Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds SHERIDAN COMMUNITY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds THE GROUNDWATER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MICHIGAN MARITIME MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds NET FOUNDATION FOR TELEVISION ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR LINCOLN PUBLIC SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds OVAL BEACH PRESERVATION SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds KALAMAZOO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds STAND FOR SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds CHARLEVOIX AREA COMMUNITY POOL ↗
- Who funds TROUT UNLIMITED MICHIGAN COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds WABANAKI YOUTH IN SCIENCE 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: Cooper Foundation · Lincoln Community Foundation Inc · Nebraska Community Foundation · The Sherwood Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Lee and Debbie Stuart Family Foundation · Assurity Life Foundation · Duncan Family Trust · The Holland Foundation · Land Trust Alliance Inc · The Lozier Foundation · Charles Stewart Mott 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 Ja Woollam 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.