· Community foundation
Rotary Club of Milwaukee Community Trust
Support for the rotary club of milwaukee's charitable projects.support to the rotary club of milwaukee's scholarship program.
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.
The 8 grants below total $134,700 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $243,698 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $108,998 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $6k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $129k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RCM COMMUNITY FUND | $45,000 |
| ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF MILWAUKEE COUNTY | $17,500 |
| LIGHT THE HOAN | $15,750 |
| THE NEW STATE INC | $15,000 |
| URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER | $15,000 |
| ELMBROOK BROOKFIELD ROTARY FOUNDATION | $10,950 |
| HANAN REFUGEE RELIEF GROUP | $10,000 |
| MILWAUKEE PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC | $5,500 |
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 (FY20–22, $13k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
Grants abroad, by region — $36k on the FY2025 return
Schedule F, as filed: 1 region. The IRS asks for region and purpose, not the recipient, so no country or grantee can be named here.
Stated purpose: TRUCK PURCHASE AND LLANO GRANDE
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. Grants abroad on Schedule F are filed by region, purpose and amount with no recipient name, so they are shown by region and cannot be placed on the country map or matched to a grantee.
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 +60% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 6 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, 49% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $69k 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
- RCRCM COMMUNITY FUND4× · 2021–2025 · $154k · revenue +165% · 35% of their budget
URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER INC7× · 2019–2025 · $124k · revenue +24%
MILWAUKEE PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC3× · 2020–2025 · $63k · revenue +82%
Funded once
MARCUS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INCone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +14%
MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INCone grant, 2019 · $50k · revenue +5%- EWENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS-USAINCone grant, 2019 · $11k · revenue +5%
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 reach a new generation of radio listeners on air, online and in the community with a compelling selection of music and public affairs programming. the corporation celebrates milwaukee music, arts, heritage, and culture by supporting and…
The mission of the uwm foundation, inc. is to support the educational, literary, and scientific endeavors of the university of wisconsin-milwaukee by receiving, managing, and distributing gifts to benefit the university's students,…
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…
Our mission is to protect water quality and wildlife habitat in the river corridors and to advocate for sound land use in the Milwaukee, Menomonee, and Kinnickinnic River Watersheds.
Provide services to social and civic organizations to promote social and civic involvement
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
The mission of the organization is to provide a high quality education for all students with choices after graduation that will provide financial stability, inspire personal freedom to builda legacy.
The organization ignites positive change in the cultural, social and economic vitality of its community by creating world-class theater experiences that entertain, provoke and inspire meaningful dialogue among an audience representative of…
Improve metro milwaukee as a place to create jobs, invest capital and grow business.
Milwaukee women inc is an organization of executives determined to change the quality and composition of corporate boards to maximize the performance of public and private companies with a focus on women and women of color.
The mission of the milwaukee bar association is to be an inclusive, equitable and diverse organization that serves the interests of the lawyers, judges and the people of milwaukee county by working to promote the professional interests of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Milwaukee County War Memorial Inc and the most unlike its peers is Wisconsin World Affairs Council 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 30 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 30 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 RCM COMMUNITY FUND ↗
- Who funds URBAN ECOLOGY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MARCUS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds RIVER REVITALIZATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Wisconsin World Affairs Council Inc ↗
- Who funds READING IS FUNDAMENTAL INC ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF MILWAUKEE CTY ↗
- Who funds FEEDING AMERICA EASTERN WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds LIGHT THE HOAN INC ↗
- Who funds THE ROTARY FOUNDATION OF ROTARY INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds THE NEW STATE INC ↗
- Who funds ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS-USAINC ↗
- Who funds ELMBROOK BROOKFIELD ROTARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds MKE URBAN STABLES INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE FILM INC ↗
- Who funds THE MILWAUKEE SCIENCE EDUCATION CONSORTIUM INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BE AN ANGEL INC ↗
- Who funds HANAN REFUGEE RELIEF GROUP ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE COUNTY WAR MEMORIAL INC ↗
- Who funds NEU-LIFE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds Safe & Sound Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION SOUTHEAST WISCONSIN ↗
- Who funds MADISON WEST MIDDLETON ROTARY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Dr James Cameron Legacy Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE CHAMBER THEATRE LTD ↗
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 · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Joseph and Vera Zilber Family Foundation Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Bert L and Patricia S Steigleder Charitable · Harri Hoffmann Family Foundation Inc · Evan & Marion Helfaer Foundation · Harley-Davidson Foundation Inc · The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Impact100 Greater Milwaukee Inc
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 Rotary Club of Milwaukee Community 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.