· Private foundation
Rena Fee Welch Trust
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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CENTRAL COLLEGE | $1,463 |
| IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY | $1,401 |
| INDIAN HILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $1,339 |
| SIMPSON COLLEGE | $1,315 |
| IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY | $857 |
| CORNELL COLLEGE | $759 |
| IOWA CENTRAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $737 |
| TRUMAN STATE UNIVERSITY | $730 |
| WILLIAM PENN UNIVERSITY | $648 |
| CENTRAL COLLEGE | $636 |
| WILLIAM PENN UNIVERSITY | $615 |
| IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY | $613 |
| ELMHURST UNIVERSITY | $587 |
| INDIAN HILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $549 |
| BLACK HAWK EAST COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $100 |
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 (FY25–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 6%. 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.
16 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 2 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $830 went to new ones.
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
- WPWILLIAM PENN UNIVERSITY4× · 2022–2025 · $16k · revenue +13%
- IHINDIAN HILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE4× · 2022–2025 · $6k · revenue +450%
- EUELMHURST UNIVERSITY4× · 2022–2025 · $6k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- SAST AMBROSE UNIVERSITYgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $7k · revenue +83%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWAone grant, 2022 · $4k
- NHNICHOLAS HASELHUHN CO UNIVERSITYone grant, 2021 · $3k
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.
Offer a college experience including education, housing, & associated programs in lincoln, ne.
On a campus of more than 800 acres along the banks of the upper iowa river in decorah, iowa, luther is a true residential campus, with 96 percent of students living on campus and nearly 95 percent of faculty choosing to live within five…
Saint mary's university of minnesota is a private catholic institution that serves about 3,900 students annually. the university offers a comprehensive, personalized education guided by its lasallian catholic heritage. with a wide array of…
Upper iowa university provides quality educational opportunities accessible through varied delivery methods to inspire success and empower lives.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher learning in the liberal arts.
Centre college is an educational community dedicated to study in the liberal arts as a means to develop the intellectual, personal, and moral potential of its students.
Dordt university was founded in 1955 and provides christ-centered education for students, alumni, and the broader community.
Catholic, co-educational, liberal arts university educating at post-secondary & graduate level
An academic community dedicated to intellectual and personal growth within a christian environment.
A four-year liberal arts university affiliated with the evangelical lutheran church.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is St Ambrose University and the most unlike its peers is North Iowa Area Community College Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
7 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. 7 of the 44 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.
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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: Moore Scholarship Trust
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 Rena Fee Welch 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.