· Public charity
Natural Resources Foundation Of
To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 85% of NATURAL RESOURCES FOUNDATION OF’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.
The 28 grants below total $788,394 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $943,379 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $154,985 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k14 grants · $102k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $234k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $146k
- $250k+1 grant · $307k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DNR - NATURAL HERITAGE CONSERVATION | $306,711 |
| Individual grant recipient | $82,914 |
| Individual grant recipient | $62,900 |
| DNR - HAVENWOODS STATE FOREST | $46,000 |
| LANDMARK CONSERVANCY | $34,494 |
| SOUTHERN WISCONSIN BIRD ALLIANCE | $28,600 |
| LAKE MICHIGAN BIRD OBSERVATORY | $25,000 |
| SELVA | $22,500 |
| FRIENDS OF GOVERNOR DODGE STATE PARK | $22,380 |
| NEARBY NATURE MILWAUKEE | $11,900 |
| THE PRAIRIE ENTHUSIASTS | $11,704 |
| CEDAR GROVE ORNITHOLOGICAL RESEARCH STATION | $11,368 |
| GROUNDSWELL CONSERVANCY | $10,228 |
| NORTHEASTERN WISCONSIN BIRD ALLIANCE | $10,000 |
| TOMAHAWK PUBLIC LIBRARY | $9,509 |
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 11%. 4% of your 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Natural Resources Foundation Of’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 90% of the giving stays in WI; read by stated purpose it is 85% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
22 repeat relationships — 12 still active in FY2024, 10 since wound down; 14 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, 23% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $605k 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
- LMLAKE MICHIGAN BIRD OBSERVATORY6× · 2018–2024 · $94k · revenue +139%
- XSXERCES SOCIETY INC2× · 2020–2023 · $85k · revenue +93%
- SWSOUTHERN WISCONSIN BIRD ALLIANCE INC3× · 2022–2024 · $65k · revenue +306%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $80k
- WGWISCONSIN GREEN SCHOOLS NETWORKone grant, 2019 · $65k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $30k
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.
To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.
Obtain and manage land of ecological significance.
The natural resource development association supports policies that lead to proper, necessary, and conscientious resource development and conservation. by engaging community leaders, laborers, manufacturers, and job creators in the…
To protect, conserve, and enhance wisconsin's natural resources by advocating for and supporting county conservation efforts, for current and future generations.
To protect environmentally senstive land in waukesha county wisconsin
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
The mission of the wisconsin association of lakes is to conserve, enhance, and restore wisconsin's 15,000 lakes to ensure their sustainability for the benefit and collective use and enjoyment for this and future generations.
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…
Landmark conservancy is a nationally accredited, nonprofit conservation organization serving 20 counties across northwest wisconsin. their mission is to conserve wisconsin's natural legacy for everyone...forever.
Advance science-informed analysis and policy solutions that address wisconsin's greatest conservation challenges.
The mission of mississippi valley conservancy is to conserve native habitats and farmlands in the driftless area for the health and well-being of current and future generations.
To preserve, promote, protect, and enhance wisconsin state parks, forests, trails, and recreation areas.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Driftless Area Land Conservancy Inc and the most unlike its peers is Upper Sugar River Watershed. 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 32 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) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 9% 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 56 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 WEST WISCONSIN LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN WILDLIFE FEDERATION INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE MICHIGAN BIRD OBSERVATORY ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDS OF THE CORNELL LAB OF ORNITHOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds XERCES SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN WISCONSIN BIRD ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL CRANE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds RESTORING LANDS INC ↗
- Who funds THE WISCONSIN SOCIETY FOR ORNITHOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds THE PRAIRIE ENTHUSIASTs INC ↗
- Who funds DRIFTLESS AREA LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds Wisconsin Association for Environmental Education Inc ↗
- Who funds SELVA INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF GOVERNOR DODGE STATE PARK ↗
- Who funds NORTH LAKELAND DISCOVERY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Nearby Nature Milwaukee ↗
- Who funds KETTLE MORAINE LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds FIELD EDVENTURES INC ↗
- Who funds DANE COUNTY CONSERVATION LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATIONS OF SUCCESS INC ↗
- Who funds Milwaukee Audubon Society Inc ↗
- Who funds LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN ↗
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 · James E Dutton Foundation Inc · Madison Gas and Electric Foundation Inc · John C Bock Foundation · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Patagoniaorg · Madison Community Foundation · The Nature Conservancy · Rusinow Family Charitable Foundation · Sandy Oaks Foundation Douglas W Caves · National Fish and Wildlife Foundation · Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region 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 Natural Resources Foundation Of 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.
- Xerces Society Inc — 22% 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.
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Find your warmest path to Natural Resources Foundation Of 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.