· Private foundation
James & Leigh Peterson Family Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k34 grants · $87k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $40k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST AUGUSTINE PREPARATORY ACADEMY INC | $50,000 |
| ST ANN CENTER FOR INTERGEN CARE | $20,000 |
| MILWAUKEE RESCUE MISSION | $10,000 |
| PIUS XI CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| PATHFINDERS MILWAUKEE INC | $5,000 |
| MILWAUKEE REPERTORY THEATRE | $5,000 |
| LADIES AUXILIARY OF ARLINGTON | $5,000 |
| DOGS TO DOG TAGS | $5,000 |
| PATRIOT PAWS SERVICE DOGS | $5,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CHILDRENS HOSPITAL OF WI FOUNDATION | $4,000 |
| SEMPER FI & AMERICA'S FUND | $4,000 |
| SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN | $3,000 |
| GUARDIAN ANGELS MEDICAL SERVICE DOGS | $3,000 |
| VETERANS OUTREACH OF WISCONSIN | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $100k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 64% 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.
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 +78% since the first grant, against +52% for the ones you funded once.
43 repeat relationships — 28 still active in FY2024, 15 since wound down; 10 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
ST AUGUSTINE PREPARATORY ACADEMY INC3× · 2022–2024 · $80k · revenue +190%- LILIFESTRIDERS INC8× · 2017–2024 · $68k · revenue +222%
PATHFINDERS MILWAUKEE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $52k · revenue +105%
Funded once
- PXPius XI High School Scholarship Fundone grant, 2020 · $10k
- AAALS Association-Wisconsinone grant, 2020 · $10k
- TTTHIS TIME TOMORROW INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $9k · revenue +72%
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.
Paralyzed Veterans of America - Wisconsin Chapter (PVA-WI) works to improve the quality of life for veterans, in our state, living with spinal cord injury or disease, including those with MS and ALS. Our work is carried out through a…
The war memorial center's mission is to honor the dead and serve the living. we commemorate the courageous men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of freedom while preserving and sharing the stories, experiences, and…
The mission or core purpose of fisher house wisconsin (fhw) is to:1. provide a "home away from home" for families of veterans and service members receiving medical care from any designated veterans administration (va) hospital or medical…
Our mission is to empower WI Habitat for Humanity affiliates to create one voice that advocates and influences affordable home ownership.
Revitalize Milwaukee transforms communities by providing free, critical home repairs and comprehensive services to low-income, veterans, seniors, and people with disabilities. Over the last 21 years we have grown to be the largest provider…
Provide affordable housing, support, and community to veterans throughout their lifespan.
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
To facilitate the charitable, patriotic and educational activities of the membership of the veterans of foreign wars-department of wisconsin.
The milwaukee police association fallen heroes, inc's one goal is to assist law enforcement officers, especially those with the milwaukee police department as well as their dependents, in the event of an officer's death, injury, disability…
Service for disabled adults
The mission of the professional fire fighters of wisconsin charitable foundation is to champion community risk reduction initiatives; promote fire safety and prevention; and deliver meaningful support to burn survivors, fire fighters and…
Wisconsin veterans network's mission is to serve the needs of veterans and their families facing crises. we accomplish that mission through a network of public, private, nonprofit and veteran service organizations, without respect to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wounded Warrior Project Inc and the most unlike its peers is Friends of the Parks of Pewaukee. 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 23 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% 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 8% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 77 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 ST AUGUSTINE PREPARATORY ACADEMY INC ↗
- Who funds LIFESTRIDERS INC ↗
- Who funds PATHFINDERS MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE REPERTORY THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds HUNGER TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds VETERANS COMMUNITY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds SEMPER FI & AMERICA'S FUND ↗
- Who funds MALAIKA EARLY LEARNING CENTER ↗
- Who funds PATRIOT PAWS SERVICE DOGS ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY NORTHWOODS INC ↗
- Who funds Pewaukee Scholarship Fund Inc ↗
- Who funds LAKE AREA FREE CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds Exploit No More Inc ↗
- Who funds Hope Center Inc ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds GREEN LAKE AREA ANIMAL SHELTER LTD ↗
- Who funds ELMBROOK HUMANE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds THE THRESHOLD INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds BUDDA-BOX INC ↗
- Who funds GUARDIAN ANGELS MEDICAL SERVICE DOGS INC ↗
- Who funds THIS TIME TOMORROW INC ↗
- Who funds STARS AND STRIPES HONOR FLIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE HOMELESS VETERANS INITIATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds USO WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds FEEDING AMERICA EASTERN WISCONSIN 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: Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Waukesha County Community Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Youth Foundation Inc · Ralph Evinrude Foundation Inc · Kolaga Family Charitable Trust · Anon Charitable Trust · Direct Supply Foundation Inc
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 & Leigh Peterson Family 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 0% of income from government
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 & Leigh Peterson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to James & Leigh Peterson Family 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.