· Public charity
Kowalski's 4 Kids
KOWALSKI'S 4 KIDS is organized to raise funds for the benefit of children.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $263k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILD WELLNESS INSTITUTE | $100,000 |
| HAZELDEN BETTY FORD FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| THE HUMANITY ALLIANCE | $62,500 |
| NEW HEIGHTS 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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 84% 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.
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.
8 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 5 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 96% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k 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
- WCWashburn Center for Children3× · 2020–2022 · $300k · revenue +37%
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF THE TWIN CITIES3× · 2017–2019 · $300k · revenue +42%
- BCBEST CHRISTMAS EVER INC3× · 2020–2022 · $300k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- AAAFRICAN AMERICANN CHILD WELLNESS INSTITUTE INCone grant, 2021 · $75k
- RFRUMSEY FAMILY ENDOWMENT FUNDone grant, 2019 · $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.
Breakthrough Twin Cities supports students on their journey to college by fostering a community of mutual learning with the next generation of educators so they both can collaborate, grow, and thrive.
Association house's mission is to advance each person's full participation in the life of their families, communities, and society. since 1899, we have served a vibrant, multicultural community. we used a trauma informed, culturally…
Our mission is to assist teens and adults in gaining freedom from chemical addictions and other life controlling problems by addressing their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
The Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health exists to expand access to quality evidence-based youth mental health support as quickly as possible.
The Minnesota Children's Alliance leads the development and growth of locally based children's advocacy centers and multidisciplinary teams to ensure equitable access to services for healing and growth.
Our mission is to provide high quality, accessible mental health and human services which are:-Rooted in the belief that change is possible-Person-centered and designed to empower independence-Technically sound and informed by…
Mothers Tutoring Academy (MTA) is a non-profit and an after-school tutoring institution founded on the tenets of the bylaws of the State of Minnesota. It's co-educational where both genders sit and study together and an inclusive school…
Strengthen central mn communities through leadership in workforce excellence.
Strengthening lives, families, and communities through our cornerstone values.
By tapping the intrinsic motivation and curiosity of every child, we deliver higher than usual growth.
Women's Foundation of Minnesota is a statewide community foundation investing in ending systemic inequities and driving innovation for gender and racial justice. WFM applies an Intersectional Equity Framework inclusive of gender, race,…
Provider of pediatric healthcare, education, research & community service
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Treehouse Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Humanity Alliance. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
9 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. 9 of the 11 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 Washburn Center for Children ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF THE TWIN CITIES ↗
- Who funds TREEHOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds BEST CHRISTMAS EVER INC ↗
- Who funds The Cookie Cart ↗
- Who funds HAZELDEN BETTY FORD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILD WELLNESS INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds The Humanity Alliance ↗
- Who funds NEW HEIGHTS SCHOOLS 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: Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation · Amazonsmile 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 Kowalski's 4 Kids 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 Kowalski's 4 Kids?
Find your warmest path to Kowalski's 4 Kids 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.