· Private foundation
Nels and Lucille Winther Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA - KEARNEY | $2,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA - OMAHA | $1,000 |
| FORT HAYS STATE UNIVERSITY | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY19–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 100% of your 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +19% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 1 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, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $500 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
- BHBLUE HILL RURAL FIRE PROTECTION2× · 2019–2021 · $50k
- MOMINDEN OPERA HOUSE INC3× · 2019–2024 · $42k · revenue +14%
- COCITY OF MINDEN2× · 2019–2021 · $32k
Funded once
- BHBLUE HILL EARLY LEARNING CENTER INCone grant, 2024 · $25k
- HWHAROLD WARP PIONEER VILLAGE FOUNDone grant, 2024 · $25k
- KCKEARNEY COUNTY AG SOCIETYone grant, 2021 · $15k
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.
Union college is a seventh-day adventist community of higher education, inspired by jesus christ, and dedicated to empowering students to learn, serve, and lead.
Bethany college is a private, four-year liberal arts college whose mission is to educate, develop, and challenge individuals to reach for truth and excellence as they lead lives of faith, learning, and service.
Through innovative learning opportunities, individual student attention, and an unwavering commitment to inclusive educational access, simpson college cultivates a diverse community of learners to lead lives of meaning and purpose.
Inspired by lutheran scholarly tradition and the liberal arts, augustana provides an education of enduring worth that challenges the intellect, fosters integrity and integrates faith with learning and service in a diverse world.
Bethany lutheran college provides christian higher education in a challenging academic environment where personal mentoring guides students to pursue knowledge, truth, and discernment for productive and fulfilling lives.
Founded by the norwegian evangelical lutheran church in 1861, luther college is a four-year, residential liberal arts institution. luther welcomes students of all backgrounds to engage in a way of learning that moves beyond immediate…
Nebraska wesleyan university is an academic community dedicated to intellectual and personal growth within the context of a liberal arts education and in an environment of christian concern.
Nebraska methodist college of nursing & allied health is a health professions institution providing education in healthcare related fields.
Hastings college is a private, co-education, residential, liberal arts college founded in 1882.
Cornell college offers an innovative and rigorous learning community where faculty and staff collaborate with students to develop the intellectual curiosity, creativity and moral courage necessary for a lifetime of learning and engaged…
Dean college is a private, residential new england college grounded in a culture and tradition that all students deserve the opportunity to discover and exceed their greatest aspirations. a personal and transformative community since 1865,…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Midland University and the most unlike its peers is Blue Hill Golf Association. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
10 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. 10 of the 38 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 MINDEN OPERA HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds BLUE HILL EARLY LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BETHANY HOME INC ↗
- Who funds KEARNEY COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Blue Hill Golf Association ↗
- Who funds MINDEN SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DORDT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NORTHWESTERN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MIDLAND UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds DOANE UNIVERSITY ↗
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: The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Lucille Winther 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Nels and Lucille Winther Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Nels and Lucille Winther 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.