· Private foundation
Nels and Liz Leutwiler 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION | $1,200 |
| NRDC | $1,000 |
| SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY | $1,000 |
| YOSEMITE CONSERVANCY | $1,000 |
| ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND | $1,000 |
| SECOND CITY CURLING FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| FRIENDS OF THE EARTH | $1,000 |
| LAKE BLUFF OPEN LANDS | $500 |
| WTTW11 | $500 |
| WILDERNESS SOCIETY | $500 |
| WOODS HOLE OCEANIC INSTITUTE | $240 |
| FRIENDS OF THE LAKE BLUFF LIBRARY | $200 |
| NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM | $200 |
| GLACIER NATIONAL PARK CONSERVANCY | $200 |
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 (FY23–23, $100) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 +21% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
62 repeat relationships — 36 still active in FY2025, 26 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (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 FY2025, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3k 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
- NINORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK6× · 2020–2025 · $6k · revenue +8%
- FOFRIENDS OF THE EARTH5× · 2021–2025 · $5k · revenue +16%
ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED3× · 2021–2025 · $2k · revenue +21%
Funded once
- LELCFPDPF ENDOWMENT FUNDone grant, 2020 · $25k
- ACAMERICAN COMPUTER AND ROBOTICS MUSEUMone grant, 2020 · $5k
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branchesgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $5k · revenue +38%
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.
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
We safeguard the earth: its people, its plants and animals, and (see schedule o) the natural systems on which all life depends. we work to restore the integrity of the elements that sustain life - air, land, and water - to defend…
The organization pursues higher standards of news coverage of natural resources and the environment -- standards of accuracy, fairness, balance, depth and context.
Rainforest trust saves endangered wildlife and protects our planet by creating rainforest reserves through partnerships, community engagement, and donor support.
We bring science, policy, and proven solutions directly to communities working to restore the integrity and natural connectivity of the landscapes in which they live. (see schedule o)
Perc is dedicated to advancing conservation through markets, incentives, property rights, and partnerships.
We work towards a future where birds thrive across the americas because audubon is a powerful, diverse, and ever-growing force for conservation. (continued on schedule o).
The wildlife society's mission is to inspire, empower, and enable wildlife professionals to sustain wildlife populations and habitats through science-based management and conservation.
This member-supported organization protects and restores iowa's land, water and wildlife for future generations. priorities include permanent land protection, promotion of improved land management and bringing new conservation…
Dedicated to protecting the world's natural environment on behalf of the public by serving as a public interest law firm. refer to schedule o, part iii, line 4a, for list of litigated cases or advocacy work.
The climate institute is organized for the purpose of educating the general public and policy makers as to the gravity of potential climate change, exploring the policy implications of the latest scientific findings on climate modelling…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Glacier National Park Conservancy and the most unlike its peers is Beef 4 Hunger. 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 51 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
60 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. 60 of the 101 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 SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN ILLINOIS FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE EARTH ↗
- Who funds THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds BELOIT COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE INTERNATIONAL DARK-SKY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Lake Bluff History Museum ↗
- Who funds Lorraine Civil Rights Museum Foundation ↗
- Who funds GLACIER NATIONAL PARK CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds The Land Institute ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF CONSERVATION VOTERS EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds BEEF 4 HUNGER ↗
- Who funds ALASKA WILDERNESS LEAGUE ↗
- Who funds THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LINCOLN PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
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: Ge Aerospace Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Ibm International Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Lee Family Foundation · Fulk Family Foundation Inc · Natural Resources Defense Council Inc · The Chicago Community Trust · Shell USA Company Foundation · John D and Catherine T Macarthur Foundation · Texas Instruments Foundation · Jpmorgan Chase 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 Nels and Liz Leutwiler 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Appalachian Mountain Club — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Nels and Liz Leutwiler Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Nels and Liz Leutwiler Foundation 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.