· Private foundation
John & Mary Pappajohn Scholarship 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
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 59% of JOHN & MARY PAPPAJOHN SCHOLARSHIP 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k11 grants · $30k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $90k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SKIDMORE COLLEGE | $50,000 |
| LEADERSHIP 100 | $25,000 |
| ANATOLIA COLLEGE | $20,000 |
| HELLENIC COLLEGE HOLY CROSS | $15,000 |
| DES MOINES UNIVERSITY | $10,000 |
| PANHELLENIC SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $6,000 |
| VALISSIMA INSTITUTE INC | $5,000 |
| HELPING HEROES FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| DRAKE UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| CROSSROAD INSTITUTE | $2,817 |
| DES MOINES SYMPHONY | $2,000 |
| BAY COLONY SCHOLARSHIP FUND | $1,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 81% of your 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 +20% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
35 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 24 since wound down; 7 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, 47% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $91k 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
- TTTHE TRUSTEES OF ANATOLIA COLLEGE7× · 2017–2024 · $145k · revenue +74%
- PSPanhellenic Scholarship Foundation5× · 2017–2024 · $104k · revenue +20%
- EAEdmundson Art Foundation Inc6× · 2017–2022 · $60k · revenue +53%
Funded once
- ASAHEPA SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATIONone grant, 2018 · $50k
- PMPINE MANOR COLLEGEone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue -98%
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2019 · $10k · revenue +22%
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.
Cornell college offers an innovative and rigorous learning community where faculty and staff collaborate with students to develop the intellectual curiosity, creativity and moral courage necessary for a lifetime of learning and engaged…
Dickinson college provides a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship
Bates is a college of the liberal arts and sciences, and is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual, and access to…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
To educate students in the liberal arts through free inquiry and the open exchange of ideas.when grinnell college framed its charter in the iowa territory of the united states in 1846, it set forth a mission to educate its students "for…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
Muhlenberg aims to help students become independent thinkers who are intellectually agile, characterized by a zest for reasoned and civil debate, knowledgeable about the achievements and traditions of diverse civilizations and cultures,…
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
Union college is a seventh-day adventist community of higher education, inspired by jesus christ, and dedicated to empowering students to learn, serve, and lead.
Mcdaniel college is a diverse student-centered community committed to excellence in the liberal arts & sciences and professional studies with careful mentoring and attention to the individual. mcdaniel changes lives. we challenge students…
As a diverse community of learners, we cultivate integrity, curiosity, connection and resilience.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Upper Iowa University and the most unlike its peers is Valissima Institute 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 67 years old; the field is 38. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 52 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 THE TRUSTEES OF ANATOLIA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Panhellenic Scholarship Foundation ↗
- Who funds HORATIO ALGER ASSN OF DISTINGUISHED AMERICANS INC ↗
- Who funds Edmundson Art Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds SKIDMORE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DRAKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds JAMES B MORRIS SCHOLARSHIP FUND INC ↗
- Who funds GRAND VIEW UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PINE MANOR COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Valissima Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Buena Vista University ↗
- Who funds DMACC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Piney Woods School ↗
- Who funds IOWA COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Simpson College ↗
- Who funds CROSSROAD INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds BETA GAMMA SIGMA INC ↗
- Who funds MERCY COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds KNOX COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WARTBURG COLLEGE ↗
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: Fahrney Education Fdtn Trust · Bestenlehner D and F Educational Tr · Pella Rolscreen Foundation · W D & Shirley Schafer-Ray Educational Trust · Marguerite V Brown · William C Knapp Charitable Fdn · MidAmerican Energy Foundation · Roy J Carver Charitable Trust · Bookey Family Foundation · Krause Gentle Foundation · Ottumwa Regional Legacy Foundation Inc · EMC Insurance 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 John & Mary Pappajohn Scholarship 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 John & Mary Pappajohn Scholarship Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John & Mary Pappajohn Scholarship 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.