· Private foundation
Pearson 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k5 grants · $21k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $138k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FOLDS OF HONOR - WISCONSIN CHAPTER | $37,100 |
| OZAUKEE FOOD ALLIANCE | $26,500 |
| LIPSETT LAKE ASSOCIATION | $18,550 |
| DAVID SHELDRICK WILDLIFE TRUST | $18,550 |
| WINGED FREEDOM RAPTOR HOSPITAL | $15,900 |
| VOYAGEURS WOLF PROJECT | $10,600 |
| CEDARBURG CULTURAL CENTER | $10,600 |
| ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF MILWAUKEE COUNTY | $5,300 |
| SPECIAL SPACES | $5,300 |
| ALL IOWA LAWN TENNIS CLUB | $5,300 |
| BEST BUDDIES WISCONSIN | $2,650 |
| CEDARBURG ATHLETIC BOOSTER CLUB | $2,650 |
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 (FY19–24, $8k) land where the poverty rate runs at 7%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 12% 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.
15 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 5 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, 58% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $66k 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
- TDTHE DAVID SHELDRICK WILDLIFE TRUST USA INC2× · 2024–2025 · $37k · revenue +13%
CEDARBURG CULTURAL CENTER INC4× · 2020–2025 · $28k · revenue +10%- CCCONQUER CANCER FOUNDATION OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY4× · 2019–2022 · $23k · revenue +36%
Funded once
- VEVARIOUS ENTITESone grant, 2023 · $108k
- AUARROWHEAD UNION HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2022 · $38k
- CPCEDARBURG POMS DANCE TEAMone grant, 2024 · $13k
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 wisconsin wildlife federation has a dual mission to engage in conservation education and to advocate for sound conservation policy.
To provide support & funding for the mission of the zoological society of milwaukee & the milwaukee county zoo.
Advance science-informed analysis and policy solutions that address wisconsin's greatest conservation challenges.
Lake Michigan is one of Wisconsin's greatest assets, and its water is critical to the state's future. The Fund for Lake Michigan is here to help sustain the Lake on behalf of the people and places that depend on it. Our goal is to have a…
To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.
The mission of wso is to promote the enjoyment, study and conservation of birds.
To preserve, promote, protect, and enhance wisconsin state parks, forests, trails, and recreation areas.
To conserve the natural environment of the cedar lakes region.
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 humane animal welfare society of waukesha county leads the community in animal welfare and assures sanctuary for animals in need.
The mission of the racine zoological society is to foster an enlightening and affordable wildlife experience that improves the bond between people and nature. the society will provide for the recreation and education of the people, the…
To inspire coexistence between humans and wildlife.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wisconsin Humane Society and the most unlike its peers is Cedarburg Athletic Booster Club Inc. 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 27 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.
21 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. 21 of the 34 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 DAVID SHELDRICK WILDLIFE TRUST USA INC ↗
- Who funds FOLDS OF HONOR WISCONSIN CHAPTER INC ↗
- Who funds CEDARBURG CULTURAL CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CONQUER CANCER FOUNDATION OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY ↗
- Who funds FISHER HOUSE WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds WINGED FREEDOM RAPTOR HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHARLES E KUBLY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Best Buddies International Inc ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE FOREVER ↗
- Who funds SAUKVILLE COMMUNITY FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OKAUCHEE LAKE SAILING SCHOOL INC ↗
- Who funds HOMETOWN HEROES INC ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF MILWAUKEE CTY ↗
- Who funds RAINCOAST CONSERVATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FURBALL FARM PET SANCTUARY ↗
- Who funds CEDARBURG ATHLETIC BOOSTER CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds OZAUKEE FAMILY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds SECUREFUTURES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE ACTUARIAL FOUNDATION ↗
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: Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Equitable Foundation Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · National Philanthropic Trust · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Network for Good
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 Pearson 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.
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% 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 Pearson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Pearson Family 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.