· Private foundation
Robert a and Lynn I Doneff 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k45 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $13k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| EMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH | $12,600 |
| MAYO CLINIC FOUNDATION | $6,000 |
| DOOR COUNTY MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| KINGDOM WORKERS | $5,000 |
| ZION LUTHERAN CHURCH | $5,000 |
| BIRCH CREEK MUSIC PERFORMANCE CENTER | $4,000 |
| ST MARCUS LUTHERAN SCHOOL | $3,000 |
| MARTIN LUTHER COLLEGE | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,900 |
| WISCONSIN LUTHERAN SEMINARY | $1,000 |
| WISCONSIN LUTHERAN COLLEGE | $1,000 |
| DOOR COUNTY LAND TRUST | $1,000 |
| WISCONSIN MARITIME MUSEUM | $1,000 |
| WISCONSIN EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN SYNOD | $775 |
| WELS CHRISTIAN AID AND RELIEF | $750 |
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 (FY21–21, $25) land where the poverty rate runs at 20%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 100% of those 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.
50 repeat relationships — 37 still active in FY2025, 13 since wound down; 9 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $7k 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
- WEWISCONSIN EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN SYNOD KINGDOM WORKERS INC5× · 2021–2025 · $18k · revenue +35%
DOOR COUNTY LAND TRUST INC5× · 2021–2025 · $5k · revenue +42%
WISCONSIN LUTHERAN COLLEGE INC5× · 2021–2025 · $5k · revenue +5%
Funded once
- BCBIRCH CREEK AT AL ATTACHEDone grant, 2020 · $25k
- MCMAYO CLINICone grant, 2021 · $3k
- HIHOSPICE IN THE VALLEYone grant, 2022 · $1k
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.
To share christ's love as we serve the spiritual, physical, intellectual and emotional needs of people entrusted to our care and others whose lives we touch.
Inspiring individuals and communities through exceptional music education, accessible to all.
To promote oshkosh and winnebago county a premier destination for corporate, sports, and leisure groups and individual visitors.
Midwest dairy works with others to give consumers an excellent dairy experience increasing sales, fostering innovation, and inspiring consumer confidence of dairy products and practices.
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.
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
To inspire and nurture a love of theatre and the arts with the following mission: the maintenance of a permanent multi-arts and theatre facility. the sponsorship and coordination of education and cultural programming in visual arts,…
The museum of wisconsin art celebrates the value, diversity, and uniqueness of the visual arts and artists of wisconsin. this is achieved by collecting, conserving, documenting, exhibiting, and promoting aesthetic understanding of the…
Luther classical college educates lutherans in the classical, lutheran tradition and prepares them for godly vocations within family, church, and society, fostering christian culture through study of the best of our western heritage.
Strengthen communities by providing high-quality and innovative artistic experiences that entertain, inspire, and unite diverse audiences.
The door county historical society strives to collect, maintain and share the history and heritage of door county through preservation, education and programming.
The minnesota chamber of commerce proactively leads the business community statewide to: advance pro-business, responsible minnesota public policy that creates jobs and grows the econony; provde member services to address evolving business…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Northern Sky Theater Inc and the most unlike its peers is 100 Women Who Care Madison. 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 45 years old; the field is 13. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 25% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 15% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 77 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 WISCONSIN EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN SYNOD KINGDOM WORKERS INC ↗
- Who funds DOOR COUNTY MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DOOR COUNTY LAND TRUST INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN LUTHERAN COLLEGE INC ↗
- Who funds BIRCH CREEK MUSIC PERFORMANCE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DOOR COUNTY MARITIME MUSEUM & LIGHTHOUSE PRESERVATION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Branch Lutheran Schools of Haiti Inc ↗
- Who funds Door County YMCA INC ↗
- Who funds NEW BEGINNINGS-A HOME FOR MOTHERS INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN MARITIME MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds WELS LUTHERANS FOR LIFE METRO MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds MANITOWOC COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CHRISTIAN LIFE RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN SKY THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds CAPITOL CIVIC CENTRE INC ↗
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: Door County Community Foundation Inc · Ellsworth and Carla Peterson Charitable Foundation · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Holzhueter Foundation · Mmg Foundation Inc · Neumann Family Foundation Inc · Siebert Lutheran Foundation Inc · John and Peggy Zimdars Foundation · Greater Green Bay Community Foundation Inc · Thrivent Financial for Lutherans · Arvid W & Judy R Schwartz Family Foundation · Thrivent Charitable Impact & Investing
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 Robert a and Lynn I Doneff 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.