· Private foundation
Mark & Kathy Larson Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 92% of Mark & Kathy Larson Foundation’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k28 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| St Tim's Church | $10,000 |
| St Tim's Church | $10,000 |
| YMCA | $5,050 |
| DMARC | $5,000 |
| Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation | $5,000 |
| Marshalltown Art and Civic Center and Fisher Art Museum | $5,000 |
| Great Outdoors Foundation | $3,000 |
| St Tim's Church | $600 |
| Colorado Outdoor Education Center | $500 |
| Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation | $500 |
| Marshalltown Martha Ellen Tye Foundation | $500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $500 |
| Easterseals Iowa | $500 |
| Des Moines Community Foundation | $500 |
| Bridges of Iowa | $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 (FY17–24, $1k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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.
16 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 17 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, 32% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
- INIOWA NATURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION2× · 2022–2024 · $6k · revenue +53%
- VTVARIETY - THE CHILDREN'S CHARITY OF IOWA6× · 2017–2022 · $4k · revenue +28%
- JAJOHN AUSTIN CHELEY FOUNDATION INC2× · 2018–2019 · $2k · revenue +21%
Funded once
- DCDOWLING CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2017 · $6k
- RRRaccoon River Pedestrian Bridgeone grant, 2022 · $4k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $4k
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 foundation is organized to further the growth and development of private colleges and universities of higher education in iowa.
The university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
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.
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…
The iowa sports foundation (isf) mission is to provide sports, recreation, health and wellness opportunities for iowans of all abilities.
Unite the caring power of communities to invest in effective solutions to improve people's lives.
The university of iowa center for advancement's mission is to advance the university of iowa through engagement and philanthropy. we serve our alumni and friends in the state and the region, throughout the country, and around the world. we…
Provide a lean, straightforward, and transparent conduit vehicle to those who wish to contribute resources for the betterment of the greater waterloo, iowa community and its citizens.
To promote the common business interests of member companies without profit and without the inuring of income to the benefit of any member company or individual. to present the executive, legislative, judicial and regulatory bodies…
To strengthen and promote organized philanthropy in the state of iowa; to assist and educate its membership in order to promote and facilitate effective philanthropic grantmaking; and to provide a forum for the exchange of information on…
The foundation for the iowa city community school district connects the community with our schools to ensure every student has extraordinary learning experiences. together we empower teachers and district staff and inspire students to…
Exploring, explaining and celebrating the world of plants.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Iowa 4-H Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Random Acts of Flowers Tampa Bay 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 45 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 — 4% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 57 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 THE YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER DES MOINES ↗
- Who funds MARSHALLTOWN COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IOWA NATURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VARIETY - THE CHILDREN'S CHARITY OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds GREAT OUTDOORS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds JOHN AUSTIN CHELEY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ELLIPSIS INC ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds Colorado Outdoor Education Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Random Acts of Flowers Tampa Bay Inc ↗
- Who funds IOWA RIVER HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds IOWA 4-H FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES SWIMMING FEDERATION ↗
- Who funds BRIDGES OF 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: EMC Insurance Foundation · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · William C Knapp Charitable Fdn · Kyle J & Sharon Krause Family Foundation · GreenState Credit Union · Meredith Corporation Foundation · Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · Deb & Bob Pulver Foundation · The Noble Foundation · John Ruan Foundation Trust · Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust · Fred Maytag 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 Mark & Kathy Larson 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.