· Private foundation
Joseph and Helen Ertl Family Foundation
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 placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k44 grants · $51k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $46k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $58k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BECKMAN CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL | $58,000 |
| ST FRANCIS XAVIER CHURCH | $31,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $15,000 |
| ST FRANCIS XAVIER SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,400 |
| GMHC RESOURCE CENTER | $3,000 |
| GUTTENBERG MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL | $2,500 |
| RURAL IOWA COMMUNITY FOOD PANTRY | $2,500 |
| CLARITY CLINIC | $2,400 |
| OUR LADY OF THE BLACK HILLS | $2,000 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF DUBUQUE | $2,000 |
| MONUMENT HEALTH FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS | $2,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CENTER FOR ADVANCEMENT | $1,500 |
| FOCUS | $1,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $12k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +59% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
84 repeat relationships — 38 still active in FY2025, 46 since wound down; 7 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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
- DIDYERSVILLE INDUSTRIES INC2× · 2023–2024 · $50k · revenue +14%
- MMMERCY MEDICAL CENTER5× · 2017–2021 · $40k · revenue +59%
- CCCatholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque9× · 2017–2025 · $18k · revenue +144%
Funded once
- TCTHE COMMUNITY COMMERCIAL CLUB PARKone grant, 2023 · $2k
- GEGuttenberg Economic & Industrial Development Commione grant, 2024 · $2k · revenue -91%
- SPST PETER & PAUL CATHOLIC CHURCHone grant, 2018 · $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.
The Dubuque Area Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) will lead tourism destination promotion and development to enhance and expand the Dubuque Area experience.
The university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
Unite the caring power of communities to invest in effective solutions to improve people's lives.
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.
To provide financial assistance to unity healthcare to help enable it to carry out its exempt function of providing health care to the community.
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
To improve the health of the people and communities we serve.
To promote and advance activities beneficial to iowa lutheran hospital.
Health care services for the people of western nebraska and eastern wyoming.
Improving the health of the community through healing, caring and teaching.
Guided by our values, Catholic Charities North Dakota serves people in need and advocates for the common good of all.
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque and the most unlike its peers is Roberto Clemente Foundation Corp. 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 43 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) — 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 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.
49 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. 49 of the 149 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 DYERSVILLE INDUSTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds MERCY MEDICAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds OPENING DOORS ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER DUBUQUE ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Area Residential Care Inc ↗
- Who funds DYERSVILLE COMMERCIAL CLUB ↗
- Who funds Monument Health Rapid City Hospital 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: Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque · Dubuque Racing Association Ltd · James B & Melita a McDonough Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Heartland Charitable Trust · Dyersville Area Foundation for the Future Inc · Herrig Charitable Foundation · Ay McDonald Charitable Foundation · Sirk Family Foundation · Flynn Family Foundation · GreenState Credit Union · The Butler Family 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 Joseph and Helen Ertl 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.
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.
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