· Private foundation
R J McElroy Trust
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k55 grants · $124k
- $10k–50k28 grants · $485k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $843k
- $250k+1 grant · $615k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WATERLOO LEISURE SERVICES | $615,000 |
| WATERLOO COMMUNITY SCHOOLS | $216,900 |
| HAWKEYE COMM COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $160,500 |
| UNI FOUNDATION | $140,000 |
| YOUTH ART TEAM | $75,000 |
| YWCA | $50,500 |
| IOWA NATURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| NASHUA PLAINFIELD SCHOOL DISTRICT | $50,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| RIYO | $50,000 |
| KEYSTONE AREA EDUCATION AGENCY | $32,800 |
| GROUT MUSEUM DISTRICT | $30,000 |
| JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF EASTERN IA | $25,000 |
| ONE CEDAR VALLEY | $25,000 |
| LITTLE KNIGHTS LEARNING CENTER | $25,000 |
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 (FY23–24, $533k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 38% 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.
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 +17% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
46 repeat relationships — 45 still active in FY2024, 1 since wound down; 46 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, 87% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $264k 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
- INIOWA NATURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION2× · 2023–2024 · $100k · revenue +38%
- CVCEDAR VALLEY PRESCHOOL & CHILD CARE CENTER2× · 2023–2024 · $68k · revenue +17%
- JAJUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF EASTERN IOWA INC2× · 2023–2024 · $50k · revenue +2%
Funded once
- SCSUNFLOWER CHILDCARE CENTER INCone grant, 2023 · $200k · revenue -38%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB CEDAR VALLEYone grant, 2023 · $100k
- WCWAVERLY CHILD CARE & PRESCHOOLone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +16%
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.
Seeking to build a stronger, more caring community by forming partnerships with businesses, community experts, education & health & human service agencies to achieve targeted outcomes & sustained changes in community conditions which will…
Child day care center
ICCJ assists children in custody disputes through child focused education and legal services. ICCJ provides education and legal services on a reduced fee or at no charge based on the ability to pay.
To provide a highly structured environment which emphasizes a safety and security to all juveniles while serving as a deterrent to criminal and anti-social behaviors. Working youth in the center and communities.
To promote the development, growth and utilization of childrens advocacy centers and multidisciplinary teams to better serve Iowas abused and neglected children and their families.
In partnership with state and federal government, our mission is to administer programs designed to help residents in our 10-county region of southwest iowa achieve self-sufficiency.
Provide affordable child care services to residents of des moines and surrounding communities
Wayland area child care organization's mission is to provide child care services to the citizens of wayland, iowa and surrounding communities.
Provide child care to community
Facilitate economic opportunity, business success, community engagement, prosperity, and quality of life for rural western iowa
Provide a well rounded, affordable and dependable daycare facility for parents with children growing up in a rural north iowa area.
To improve the health and well-being of all by empowering communities, organizations, and people to take informed actions to prevent and mitigate the lifelong effects of childhood adversity.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Junior Achievement of Eastern Iowa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Elsie Miller Palmer & Ben a Miller Scholarship Trust. 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 32 years old; the field is 55. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 10% startups (under 5 years old) — 12% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 6% 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.
40 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. 40 of the 163 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 SUCCESSLINK INC ↗
- Who funds SUNFLOWER CHILDCARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Youth Art Team ↗
- Who funds IOWA NATURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WAVERLY CHILD CARE & PRESCHOOL ↗
- Who funds WATERLOO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CEDAR VALLEY PRESCHOOL & CHILD CARE CENTER ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF EASTERN IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds Embracing Explorations ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEER CENTER OF CEDAR VALLEY ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ↗
- Who funds SUMNER DAYCARE & LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds VISION TO LEARN ↗
- Who funds IOWA JOBS FOR AMERICA'S GRADUATES INC ↗
- Who funds ONE CEDAR VALLEY ↗
- Who funds LITTLE KNIGHTS LEARNING CENTER ↗
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: Max and Helen Guernsey Charitable Foundation · Otto Schoitz Foundation · Lsb Foundation · Black Hawk County Gaming Association · Cedar Valley United Way · Trustage Foundation Inc · The Gallagher Family Foundation · GreenState Credit Union · Dupaco RW Hoefer Foundation · Greenstate Foundation · Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque · Pauline R Barrett Charitable 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 R J McElroy Trust 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.
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How do I get to R J McElroy Trust?
Find your warmest path to R J McElroy 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.