· Private foundation
John W Thompson and Jane a Bartell Charitable Foun
Its FY2025 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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k31 grants · $76k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $59k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $17,275 |
| UW FOUNDATION | $12,000 |
| VESTERHEIM | $10,000 |
| MADISON PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| CHILDRENS THEATRE OF MADISON | $10,000 |
| UW FOUNDATION | $5,500 |
| WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO | $5,000 |
| OVERTURE CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| NAGC | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| TORKSE KUBBEN FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF WISCONSIN | $3,000 |
| YWCA | $3,000 |
| WISCONSIN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA | $2,500 |
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, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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 +45% since the first grant, against +6% for the ones you funded once.
36 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 9 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $21k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION6× · 2019–2025 · $50k · revenue +21%
- CTCHILDREN'S THEATER OF MADISON INC4× · 2020–2025 · $50k · revenue +340%
- MSMADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC3× · 2019–2021 · $45k · revenue +36%
Funded once
- WHWISCONSIN HISTORICAL FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $3.0M · revenue +299% · 34% of their budget
- VNVESTERHEIM NORWEGIAN-AMERICAN MUSEUMone grant, 2022 · $105k · revenue -16%
- VMVESTERHEIM MUSEUMone grant, 2020 · $25k
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.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
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 purpose of the association shall be to restore and conserve wisconsin's waterfowl and wetland resources; to educate state waterfowlers during their progression from natural resource consumer to steward; and to promote governmental…
The museum of wisconsin art celebrates the value, diversity, and uniqueness of the visual arts and artists of wisconsin. this is achieved by collecting, conserving, documenting, exhibiting, and promoting aesthetic understanding of the…
Landmark conservancy is a nationally accredited, nonprofit conservation organization serving 20 counties across northwest wisconsin. their mission is to conserve wisconsin's natural legacy for everyone...forever.
The madison professional police officers association represents law enforcement professionals who serve the city of madison, wisconsin, as either police officers, detectives, investigators, or sergeants.
Make downtown madison an economically strong, equitable, inclusive, and vibrant place to live, work, and visit.
Renew wisconsin leads and accelerates the transformation to wisconsin's renewable energy future through advocacy, education, and collaboration.
Inspiring individuals and communities through exceptional music education, accessible to all.
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
To protect, conserve, and enhance wisconsin's natural resources by advocating for and supporting county conservation efforts, for current and future generations.
Milwaukee women inc is an organization of executives determined to change the quality and composition of corporate boards to maximize the performance of public and private companies with a focus on women and women of color.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Friends of Pbs Wisconsin Inc and the most unlike its peers is Fight for Sight 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 38 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 71 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 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VESTERHEIM NORWEGIAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S THEATER OF MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MINNESOTA INDEPENDENCE COLLEGE AND COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds MIDWEST ENVIRONMENTAL ADVOCATES INC ↗
- Who funds American Players Theatre of Wisconsin Inc ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR BLACK EXCELLENCE AND CULTURE INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds ALDO LEOPOLD NATURE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CLEAN LAKES ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds OPERATION FRESH START INC ↗
- Who funds Fight for Sight Inc ↗
- Who funds NORWEGIAN AMERICAN GENEALOGICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ACTION COALITION FOR SOUTH CENTRAL WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF PHEASANT BRANCH CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds Bonac Booster Club Inc ↗
- Who funds ARTS & LITERATURE LABORATORY 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: Madison Community Foundation · Madison Gas and Electric Foundation Inc · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · The Evjue Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Pleasant T Rowland Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · United Way of Dane County Inc · Trustage Foundation Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Hooper Corp Foundation · DAVID G and NANCY B WALSH FAMILY FOUNDATION LTD
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 W Thompson and Jane a Bartell Charitable Foun 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 W Thompson and Jane a Bartell Charitable Foun?
Find your warmest path to John W Thompson and Jane a Bartell Charitable Foun 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.