· Private foundation
Jim B Cooper & Lillian F Cooper 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: 92% of JIM B COOPER & LILLIAN F COOPER 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 |
|---|---|
| PIERCE PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $4,795 |
| LINCOLN PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $4,200 |
| CREIGHTON COMMUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $3,640 |
| DESHLER PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $3,500 |
| PLAINVIEW PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $2,500 |
| CREIGHTON AMBULANCE SERVICE | $1,860 |
| PIERCE VOLUNTEER FIRE RESCUE | $1,700 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| YORK PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $1,500 |
| WISNER-PILGER PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $1,500 |
| NORFOLK PUBLIC SCHOOLS | $1,500 |
| WISNER VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPT | $1,500 |
| PILGER FIRE AND RESCUE | $1,500 |
| YORK PARKS AND REC | $1,500 |
| PILGER SENIOR CENTER | $1,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
42 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 20 since wound down; 11 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9k 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
- PPPIERCE PUBLIC SCHOOLS7× · 2019–2025 · $27k
- CCCREIGHTON COMMUNITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS7× · 2019–2025 · $23k
- PPPLAINVIEW PUBLIC SCHOOLS7× · 2019–2025 · $21k
Funded once
- PHPIERCE HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2020 · $4k
- NCNEBRASKA COLLEGE OF TECHone grant, 2019 · $3k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $2k
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 promote, facilitate and develop or co-develop affordable housing in lincoln county, nebraska.
Non-profit learning center providing safe, affordable, high- quality, and reliable child care, for all young children in randolph, nebraska and the surrounding area.
The center operates a group home for troubled youth, ages 12-18, in western nebraska.
Lincoln college uniquely empowers students to realize their full potential
To build the capacity of youth serving organizations, service providers, families and community to claim their voice, cultivate healing and take courageous action to improve their overall health and well being.
To Market Lincoln as the area of choice in which to live and do business, by attracting, assisting, retaining and promoting our members
To provide comprehensive outpatient mental health services to over 5400 individuals and their families in a consumer driven person centered delivery system. Approximately 15% of our staff members are our clients who are involved in a…
Early childhood development.
Building strong communities through access to quality affordable patient centered healthcare to the medically underserved population of Lincoln County, Montana in accordance with requirements set forth in 42 U.S.C. 254C(C)(3)(G).
To promote and coordinate economic development, education, and quality of life through strengthened communication in north central nebraska.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Educare of Lincoln Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Zone Afterschool Program. 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 20 years old; the field is 32. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 10% of your grantees by number, and just 7% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 106 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: Nebraska Community Foundation · Lincoln Community Foundation Inc · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Hugo a and Thelma Aspegren Charitable Trust · Assurity Life Foundation · Duncan Family Trust · Cooper Foundation · Spreetail Foundation · The Sherwood Foundation · Moeller Charitable Trust · Dolezal Family Foundation · Rogers 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 Jim B Cooper & Lillian F Cooper 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.