· Private foundation
Meier 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 $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k22 grants · $355k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY | $30,000 |
| COVENANT HOUSE | $25,000 |
| NO KID HUNGRY BY SHARE OUR STRENGTH | $25,000 |
| HUNGER TASK FORCE | $25,000 |
| THE WOMEN'S CENTER | $20,000 |
| MENTAL HEALTH AMERICA OF WISCONSIN | $20,000 |
| RED CROSS | $20,000 |
| HORIZON HOME CARE AND HOSPICE | $20,000 |
| DISCOVERY WORLD LTD | $20,000 |
| WOMEN AND GIRLS FUND OF WAUKESHA COUNTY | $20,000 |
| EXCHANGE CLUB OF CULVER CITY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| AMERICARES | $10,000 |
| URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER | $10,000 |
| WORLD VISION | $10,000 |
| MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $180k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 22% 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.
35 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
RADIO MILWAUKEE INC5× · 2017–2021 · $378k · revenue +78%- CHCHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF WISCONSIN INC3× · 2017–2019 · $152k · revenue +43%
- TWTHE WOMEN'S CENTER INC7× · 2017–2025 · $140k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- HTHOLY TRINITY CHURCHone grant, 2017 · $150k
- MDMILWAUKEE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATIONgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +31%
- FWFroedtert West Bend Hospital Foundation Incone grant, 2017 · $20k · revenue -39%
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.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
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 inspire people to experience life at its fullest by encouraging ownership of health, fostering independence, and serving the whole person; and do so with an unwavering commitment as stewards of medicaid funding.
Promote a positive state legislative and regulatory climate for wisconsin's community health plans. the association communicates with regulatory agencies to promote issue positions representing community health plans.
We actively advocate, educate and support our members to help them positively impact the wisconsin communities they serve.
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
To improve the health of the people of wisconsin by supporting and strengthening physicians' ability to practice high quality patient care in a changing environment.
Creating powerful advocacy to enhance economic vitality in the minneapolis-st. paul region.
The museum of wisconsin art celebrates the value, diversity, and uniqueness of the visual arts and artists of wisconsin. this is achieved by collecting, conserving, documenting, exhibiting, and promoting aesthetic understanding of the…
Founded in 1911, our mission is to make wisconsin the most competitive state in the nation to do business. we are wisconsin's business voice.
The minnesota chamber of commerce proactively leads the business community statewide to: advance pro-business, responsible minnesota public policy that creates jobs and grows the econony; provde member services to address evolving business…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Make-a-Wish Foundation of Wisconsin Inc and the most unlike its peers is Exchange Club of Culver City Charitable Foundation. 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 41 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% 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 8% 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.
34 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. 34 of the 51 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 RADIO MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds THE WOMEN'S CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds HORIZON HOME CARE & HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds HUNGER TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY HISTORIC SITE INC ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY WORLD LTD ↗
- Who funds EXCHANGE CLUB OF CULVER CITY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Mental Health America of Wisconsin Inc ↗
- Who funds FOOD PANTRY OF WAUKESHA COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds Oconomowoc Food Pantry Inc ↗
- Who funds WOMEN AND GIRLS FUND OF WAUKESHA COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICARES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds WAUKESHA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds MARCUS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds WORLD VISION INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST STAGE MILWAUKEE ↗
- Who funds MAKE-A-WISH FOUNDATION OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds Easter Seals Southeast Wisconsin Inc ↗
- Who funds Froedtert West Bend Hospital Foundation 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: Baird Foundation Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Harley-Davidson Foundation Inc · Waukesha County Community Foundation · Ellenbecker Investment Group Charitable Foundation Inc · Youth Foundation Inc · Ralph Evinrude Foundation Inc · Evan & Marion Helfaer Foundation · Joseph and Vera Zilber Family Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc
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 Meier 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.
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
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.