· Private foundation
James B & Melita a McDonough 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: 58% of JAMES B & MELITA A MCDONOUGH 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k76 grants · $221k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $165k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HOLY FAMILY | $50,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER DUB | $15,000 |
| COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS OF EASTERN IA | $15,000 |
| RIVERVIEW CENTER | $15,000 |
| DUBUQUE COMMUNITY YMCAYWCA | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| OPENING DOORS | $15,000 |
| THE POWER OF PRAYER INC | $15,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| DUBUQUE REGIONAL HUMANE SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| ST MARK YOUTH ENRICHMENT | $10,000 |
| MINDFUL MINUTES | $10,000 |
| CLARKE UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| RED BASKET PROJECT | $9,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $259k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 +27% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
111 repeat relationships — 57 still active in FY2025, 54 since wound down; 28 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, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $71k 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
- DCDUBUQUE COMMUNITY Y6× · 2020–2025 · $90k · revenue +86%
- SMSt Mark Youth Enrichment6× · 2020–2025 · $80k · revenue +147%
- TPTHE POWER OF PRAYER INC6× · 2020–2025 · $70k · revenue +40% · 32% of their budget
Funded once
- COCITY OF CASCADEone grant, 2024 · $20k
- CCCRESCENT COMM HEALTH CENTERone grant, 2020 · $20k
- DADYERSVILLE AREA FOUNDATION FOR THE FUTURE INCone grant, 2024 · $15k · revenue 0%
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.
The Dubuque Area Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) will lead tourism destination promotion and development to enhance and expand the Dubuque Area experience.
Providing compassionate care for persons with serious and terminal illness and their loved ones.
Plan, manage and implement downtown services
Dubuque County Early Childhood builds community collaboration, commitment, and advocacy for a quality early childhood system.
The organization receives, warehouses, and distributes salvageable food items to non-profit tax exempt member agencies to feed the ill, needy, and infants.
Our mission is to champion the iowa city downtown district as a progressive, healthy, and culturally-vibrant urban center of the region.
To promote and advance activities beneficial to iowa lutheran hospital.
Seeking to build a stronger, more caring community by forming partnerships with businesses, community experts, education & health & human service agencies to achieve targeted outcomes & sustained changes in community conditions which will…
Providing opportunities in which to promote individual capabilities of a person while also promoting goodwill in the community
Country fair activities, musical entertainment, stock races & concessions
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Helping Services for Youth and Families Inc and the most unlike its peers is Brain Health Now Inc. 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 33 years old; the field is 26. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.9% lost their exemption, against 6% 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.
87 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. 87 of the 236 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER DUBUQUE ↗
- Who funds DUBUQUE COMMUNITY Y ↗
- Who funds St Mark Youth Enrichment ↗
- Who funds THE POWER OF PRAYER INC ↗
- Who funds Clarke University of Dubuque Iowa ↗
- Who funds Riverview Center Inc ↗
- Who funds DUBUQUE REGIONAL HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds OPENING DOORS ↗
- Who funds Iowa Legal Aid ↗
- Who funds Foundation for Dubuque Public Schools ↗
- Who funds LORAS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Hillcrest Family Services Inc ↗
- Who funds DUBUQUE DREAM CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FOUR MOUNDS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RED BASKET PROJECT ↗
- Who funds RIVER BEND FOOD RESERVOIR ↗
- Who funds CAMP COURAGEOUS OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds DURIDE ↗
- Who funds THE GRAND OPERA HOUSE ↗
- Who funds VISION TO LEARN ↗
- Who funds PRESENTATION LANTERN ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS OF EASTERN IOWA ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF DUBUQUE AREA TRI-STATES ↗
- Who funds CENTRALLY ROOTED MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds BELL TOWER PRODUCTIONS ↗
- Who funds DYERSVILLE AREA FOUNDATION FOR THE FUTURE INC ↗
- Who funds Jackson County Fair Association ↗
- Who funds THE DUBUQUE VISITING NURSE ASSOCIATION ↗
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 Foundation of Greater Dubuque · Dubuque Racing Association Ltd · Heartland Charitable Trust · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Spahn & Rose Lumber Co Charitable Fdtn · The Butler Family Foundation · Ay McDonald Charitable Foundation · Dupaco RW Hoefer Foundation · Falb Family Charitable Foundation · Mathis Pfohl Foundation · Sirk Family Foundation · United Way of Dubuque Area Tri-States
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 James B & Melita a McDonough 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 James B & Melita a McDonough Foundation?
Find your warmest path to James B & Melita a McDonough 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.