· Private foundation
John Ruan Foundation Trust
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k25 grants · $98k
- $10k–50k18 grants · $235k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $160k
- $250k+7 grants · $3.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| MERCY ONE FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| MERCY ONE FOUNDATION | $500,000 |
| IOWA CONFLUENCE WATER TRAILS | $300,000 |
| ELLIPSIS | $250,000 |
| IOWA MOTOR CARRIERS FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY | $250,000 |
| BRAVO GREATER DES MOINES | $100,000 |
| DOWLING CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL | $60,000 |
| ISU FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| DES MOINES SYMPHONY | $25,000 |
| WORLD FOOD PRIZE | $25,000 |
| DRAKE UNIVERSITY | $20,000 |
| DES MOINES METROPOLITAN OPERA | $10,000 |
| ST AUGUSTIN CATHOLIC SCHOOL | $10,000 |
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 (FY24–24, $50k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 +15% since the first grant, against +6% for the ones you funded once.
63 repeat relationships — 46 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 3 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, 54% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.9M 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
- BPBLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INC5× · 2021–2025 · $2.0M · revenue +42%
DRAKE UNIVERSITY5× · 2021–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +4%
Northwestern University5× · 2021–2025 · $1.0M · revenue +14%
Funded once
- UCUS Chamber Foundationone grant, 2021 · $1.6M
- CICHILDSERVE INCone grant, 2024 · $500k · revenue +7%
- ESEVANS SCHOLARS FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $500k
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 university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
Common good iowa engages iowans to create and advocate for research-based public policy that makes life better and more equitable for all who make iowa home.
The university of iowa center for advancement's mission is to advance the university of iowa through engagement and philanthropy. we serve our alumni and friends in the state and the region, throughout the country, and around the world. we…
Exploring, explaining and celebrating the world of plants.
Our mission is to strengthen the university of iowa through alumni engagement. we do this through our communications, alumni programs, and events.
Our mission is to advance the practice of medicine through advocacy, education, and engagement with physicians throughout iowa to ensure the highest quality of care for the patients they serve.
To promote the common business interests of member companies without profit and without the inuring of income to the benefit of any member company or individual. to present the executive, legislative, judicial and regulatory bodies…
Founded in 1995 as the philanthropic arm of the iowa credit union league and guided by the credit union philosophy of "people helping people", the iowa credit union foundation (the foundation) works to champion financial well-being for…
To improve lives in our global community by educating diverse groups of highly competent and compassionate health professionals.
Building iowa's values by recognizing and responding to significantchanges in iowa - those that fundamentally affect families and communities.
Midwest dairy works with others to give consumers an excellent dairy experience increasing sales, fostering innovation, and inspiring consumer confidence of dairy products and practices.
The foundation for the iowa city community school district connects the community with our schools to ensure every student has extraordinary learning experiences. together we empower teachers and district staff and inspire students to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Des Moines Arts Festival Inc and the most unlike its peers is World Food Prize Foundation. 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 41 years old; the field is 24. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
57 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. 57 of the 102 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 BLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE CENTER OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds DRAKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Northwestern University ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds IOWA CONFLUENCE WATER TRAILS ↗
- Who funds IOWA MOTOR CARRIERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILDSERVE INC ↗
- Who funds ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MALTZ JUPITER THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds SALISBURY HOUSE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREAT OUTDOORS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BALLET DES MOINES ↗
- Who funds MAINFRAME STUDIOS ↗
- Who funds ELLIPSIS INC ↗
- Who funds World Food Prize Foundation ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES COMMUNITY PLAYHOUSE ↗
- Who funds BRAVO GREATER DES MOINES INC ↗
- Who funds IOWA NATURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKE STATES DAIRY CENTER 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: EMC Insurance Foundation · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · Meredith Corporation Foundation · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · Bookey Family Foundation · The West Bancorporation Foundation Inc · Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust · Kyle J & Sharon Krause Family Foundation · Thomas & Linda Koehn Foundation · Gartner Family Foundation % Michael G Gartner · William C Knapp Charitable Fdn
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 Ruan Foundation Trust 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.
- Tuality Healthcare Foundation — 3% 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.