· Private foundation
Lau & Bea Christensen Charitable Foundat
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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
71% of Lau & Bea Christensen Charitable Foundat’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Madison Community Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 4 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Lau & Bea Christensen Charitable Foundat named its own grantees at scale: 31 organizations, $805k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
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 · FY2023
- Under $10k12 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k31 grants · $521k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $100,000 |
| MADISON READING PROJECT | $50,000 |
| THE PLAYING FIELD | $50,000 |
| JDRF TID FUND LLC | $50,000 |
| ACLU FOUNDATION OF WI | $44,000 |
| WISCONSIN YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $40,000 |
| MADISON COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY | $25,000 |
| WISCONSINS GREENFIRE | $22,000 |
| CHILDREN'S THEATER OF MADISON | $20,000 |
| LITERACY NETWORK | $20,000 |
| JUST DANE | $20,000 |
| WISCONSIN CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE | $20,000 |
| NATURAL RESOURCES FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| THE RIVER FOOD PANTRY | $20,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $612k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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 +39% since the first grant, against -40% for the ones you funded once.
66 repeat relationships — 46 still active in FY2023, 20 since wound down; 2 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 93% 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
- PPPLANNED PARENTHOOD OF WISCONSIN INC3× · 2018–2020 · $346k · revenue +19%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION5× · 2017–2021 · $331k · revenue +39%
- IAIRWIN A AND ROBERT D GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER INC9× · 2017–2025 · $250k · revenue +113%
Funded once
- PPPWIone grant, 2021 · $210k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $50k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $20k
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.
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.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
Renew wisconsin leads and accelerates the transformation to wisconsin's renewable energy future through advocacy, education, and collaboration.
The partnership is committed to housing for everyone because it's essential for building healthy communities. we build effective public-private partnerships to expand access to affordable housing options. we do this by directly developing…
Goodwill of south central wisconsin's mission is to help people in our community to live, work and thrive through housing, employment and supportive services. see schedule o for continuationsupported employment and job skills training are…
Gathering waters (wisconsin's alliance for land trusts) strengthens land trusts to protect wisconsin's special places and grow healthy, vibrant communities. the stronger the alliance between gathering waters' staff and board members, land…
Wayforward resources, inc. brings our community together to create food and housing security through action and advocacy.
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…
To advance progressive values, ideas and policies through research, policy, networking, advocacy and public education.
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.
The organization acquires, holds, administers, and distributes real and personal property for the benefit of the university of wisconsin (uw)-madison.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Madison Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Guttmacher 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 39 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) — 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 12% 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.
48 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 48 of the 87 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 MADISON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IRWIN A AND ROBERT D GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF DANE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON AREA TECHNICAL COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LITERACY NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR BLACK EXCELLENCE AND CULTURE INC ↗
- Who funds VERA COURT NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE RIVER FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds WCIJ INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN'S GREEN FIRE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds PORCHLIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds JUSTDANE ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds THE PLAYING FIELD INC ↗
- Who funds OPERATION FRESH START INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY NORTHWOODS INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds Cloud Forest School Foundation ↗
- Who funds YWCA MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds THE ROAD HOME DANE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S THEATER OF MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds Guttmacher Institute Inc ↗
- Who funds MADISON READING PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA 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 · The Evjue Foundation Inc · Madison Gas and Electric Foundation Inc · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · The Oscar Rennebohm Foundation Inc · The Roots and Wings Foundation Inc · Endres Manufacturing Foundation Inc · United Way of Dane County Inc · Ascendium Education Solutions Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Madison Rotary 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 Lau & Bea Christensen Charitable Foundat 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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How do I get to Lau & Bea Christensen Charitable Foundat?
Find your warmest path to Lau & Bea Christensen Charitable Foundat 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.