How much does Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust give?

Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust reported 10 grants totaling $99,692 in its FY2025 IRS filing. It funded between 13 and 16 organizations a year over FY2018 to FY2024.

Who are Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust's largest grantees?

By total granted over FY2017 to FY2025: Ice Age Trail Alliance Inc ($798k), Carroll University Inc ($705k), Friends of Kickapoo Valley Reserve Inc ($428k).

Does Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust fund new organizations?

In FY2024, 15% of the organizations it funded were first-time grantees.

Does Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust accept unsolicited applications?

Its most recent filing reports that it accepts unsolicited grant applications.

Which funders back the same organizations as Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust?

Its strongest co-funders, measured against what their size predicts, include Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc, Baird Foundation Inc, Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc.

Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust

Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust at a glance

· Private foundation

Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust

Q: What does Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust fund?

By grant dollars over FY2017 to FY2025, its largest causes are Human Services (27%), Recreation & Sports (21%), Environment (18%).

Q: Where is Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust based?

Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust is based in WI.

Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.

$100k

Granted FY2025still arriving

Grants FY2025still arriving

States reached

$49k

Largest

01What it funds

0197% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2017 to 2025.

Human Services$2.6MRecreation & Sports$2.1MEnvironment$1.8MPhilanthropy$1.7MEducation$1.1MCommunity Improvement$144kAnimals$103kYouth Development$95kOther$0

02FY2025 · 10 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k5 grants · $5k
$10k–50k5 grants · $94k

$10,000

Median grant

States reached

$1.4M

Total assets

Largest grants
Recipient	Amount
WISCORPS INC	$49,236
MILWAUKEE PARKS FOUNDATION	$15,000
Individual grant recipient	$10,000
OUTDOOR RECREATION ALLIANCE	$10,000
ALL HANDS BOATWORKS	$10,000
NOTRE DAME SCHOOL OF MILWAUKEE	$1,456
LAKE PARK FRIENDS	$1,000
IZAAK WALTON LEAGUE UPPER MISSISSIPPI CHAPTER	$1,000
LAKE SHORE STATE PARK	$1,000
JUNEAU PARK FRIENDS	$1,000

02The need

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 92% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

How this is measured

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

How this is measured

US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.

Where the work is directed

The same grants placed two ways: where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose sends the money.

About 23% of Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust’s grant dollars are earmarked for a different county than the recipient’s own address. By recipient address, 100% of the giving stays in WI; by stated purpose, 18%.

Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trustlessmore of its giving

Placed by recipient address · 82% directed abroad (not shown)

How this is measured

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 funder’s own 990 grant descriptions.

03Its grantees

repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

99%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.

$9.1M · 24 repeat orgs$91k to everyone else

Grantees it renews have grown median revenue +49% since the first grant, against +31% for those funded once.

24 repeat relationships: 9 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$9.1M

$81k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+49%

+31%

Still filing today

71%

50%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $10k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

EnvironmentEducationRecreation & SportsAnimalsCommunity ImprovementHealthOther

How this is measured

First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

IA
ICE AGE TRAIL ALLIANCE INC
4× · 2019–2023 · $798k · revenue +136%
CU
CARROLL UNIVERSITY INC
3× · 2017–2019 · $705k · revenue +18%
CC
CENTRAL CONSERVATION INC
6× · 2019–2025 · $123k · revenue +142%

Funded once

IG
Individual grant recipient
one grant, 2017 · $25k
HIGHLAND COMMUNITY SCHOOL INCgraduated
one grant, 2017 · $15k · revenue +58%
GM
Greater Milwaukee Committee for Community Development
one grant, 2018 · $15k · revenue -40%

How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field

Closest unfunded matches

The nonprofits that most resemble its grantees but are not funded by it, scored along the direction from the rest of the field toward the portfolio. A resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.

Landmark Conservancy Inc

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.

Environment

Milwaukee Water Commons Inc

Milwaukee water commons is helping catalyze milwaukee as a true model water city-a place where we all have a stake in the health of our waters and all share in their stewardship and benefits. we are advancing our community envisioned water…

Environment

Land Conservancy of West Michigan

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…

Environment

Wisconsin Waterfowl Association Inc

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…

Environment

Fund for Lake Michigan Inc

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…

Environment

Wisconsin Wildlife Federation Inc

The wisconsin wildlife federation has a dual mission to engage in conservation education and to advocate for sound conservation policy.

Environment

Wisconsin Association of Lakes Inc

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.

Environment

Natural Resources Foundation of

To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.

—

Glacial Lakes Conservancy Inc

Glacial Lakes Conservancy, as a land trust, is a nonprofit organization that, as part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement acquisitions.

Environment

Friends of Wisconsin State Parks Inc

To preserve, promote, protect, and enhance wisconsin state parks, forests, trails, and recreation areas.

Recreation & Sports

Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association Inc

To protect, conserve, and enhance wisconsin's natural resources by advocating for and supporting county conservation efforts, for current and future generations.

Environment

Madison LakeWay Partners Inc

Madison LakeWay Partners is a private 501(c)(3) organization partnering with the City of Madison to leverage philanthropic dollars to reimagine the Lake Monona waterfront along John Nolen Drive. The Partners imagine the waterfront as a…

Recreation & Sports

How this is measured

The grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Milwaukee Parks Foundation Inc; the most unlike its peers is Earthjustice. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.

05the grantee network

26 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 26 of the 36 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

25/26

Grantees still filing

22/26

Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

Other$7,284,436Environment$916,736Education$795,800Philanthropy$586,351Recreation & Sports$103,500Animals$103,000Community Improvement$60,000Health$10,000

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

Herbert H Kohl Charities IncWI31.5× affinity13 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Ralph Evinrude Foundation Inc · Evan & Marion Helfaer Foundation · Harley-Davidson Foundation Inc · R a Stevens Family Foundation · Anon Charitable Trust · Joseph and Vera Zilber Family Foundation Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Gardner Foundation

How this is measured

Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust. Bigger dots raise more.

2024

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

8report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)

0rely on government for over half their income

typical government reliance, FY20–25

How this is measured

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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

05Through Plinth

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus

How do I get to Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust?

Find your warmest path to Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein Charitable Trust 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.

Play a game based on Prairie Springs Paul Fleckenstein’s filings →

More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions

grants reported with no recipient in the public record

The regranting layer

51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer

The DAF merry-go-round

$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds

The endowment market

who holds foundation money, and what just moved

The camps

funders cluster by geography, not ideology

By state

where grant money is based, and what stays home