· Private foundation
Lavern T Busse & Audrey Busse Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $38k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $135k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $453k
- $250k+2 grants · $2.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BUSSE FOUNDATION FUND AT DAFGIVING360 | $1,754,990 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF THE COORIDOR | $455,998 |
| MERCY MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $103,920 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CENTER FOR ADVANCEMENT | $100,913 |
| TANAGER PLACE | $92,120 |
| MOUNT MERCY UNIVERSITY | $55,888 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,415 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF JOHNSON COUNTY | $50,121 |
| MAYO CLINIC DEPT OF DEVELOPMENT | $42,924 |
| JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF EASTERN IOWA INC | $26,600 |
| LINN COUNTY TRAILS ASSOCIATION | $25,270 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| WARTBURG COLLEGE | $15,237 |
| ADVISORY COMMITTEE PUBLIC CHARITY INC | $9,591 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,500 |
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 (FY17–23, $309k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 24% 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 +32% since the first grant, against +5% for the ones you funded once.
78 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 64 since wound down; 4 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 35% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.8M 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
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE CORRIDOR8× · 2017–2024 · $2.1M · revenue +95% · 26% of their budget
- MFMOUND FARM HOLDINGS INC8× · 2017–2024 · $736k · revenue +3%
- TPTANAGER PLACE8× · 2017–2024 · $454k · revenue +68%
Funded once
- TLTHE LORIANN BUSSE CHARITABLE FUNDone grant, 2019 · $500k
- TLTHE LISA R CARPENTIER CHARITABLE FUNDone grant, 2019 · $429k
- SMST MARKS CHURCHone grant, 2017 · $90k
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.
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 facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
The union works to advocate and advance a public policy agenda to support and protect the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of iowa. it works to maintain throughout the united states the rights of free…
The foundation works to defend and promote the constitution of the united states, focusing especially on the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and 14th amendments. the foundation also works to defend and promote the constitution of the…
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…
Engages, equips and empowers learners to explore their vocations, fulfill their potential and serve the world.
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
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…
Our mission is to inspire the iowa city area to be greater by: 1) elevating business, 2) investing in strategic initiatives, and 3) advocating for the economic resiliency of the greater community.
Christian caring - enhancing lives through a commitment to individualized care in a home empowered by god's love.
Our mission is to strengthen the university of iowa through alumni engagement. we do this through our communications, alumni programs, and events.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Arc of East Central Iowa and the most unlike its peers is Monarch Research Project. 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 38. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
53 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. 53 of the 118 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 BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE CORRIDOR ↗
- Who funds MOUND FARM HOLDINGS INC ↗
- Who funds TANAGER PLACE ↗
- Who funds STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF EASTERN IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds COE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WARTBURG COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds ST MARK LUTHERAN CHURCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Young America's Foundation ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF EAST CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds CATHERINE MCAULEY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds TURNING POINT USA INC ↗
- Who funds The Freedom Foundation ↗
- Who funds CAMP COURAGEOUS OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds FOUR OAKS FAMILY AND CHILDREN'S SERVICES ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF JOHNSON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THE ARC OF EAST CENTRAL IOWA ↗
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: Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · GreenState Credit Union · Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation · United Fire Group Foundation · Hawkeye Area Community Action Program Inc · The Hall-Perrine Foundation · Carleen and Eugene Grandon Charitable Foundation · TrueNorth Legacy Foundation · John P & Lawrence J Giacoletto Fnd · The Accel Foundation · David Neuhaus Family Foundation · The McIntyre 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 Lavern T Busse & Audrey Busse 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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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.