· Private foundation
Rusinow Family Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CEDAR GROVE ORINTHOLOGICAL RESEARCH STATION | $3,248 |
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $3,000 |
| AMERICAN BIRDING ASSOCIATION | $2,000 |
| ART OF DANCE | $1,500 |
| WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND ARTS AND LETTERS | $1,000 |
| SCHLITZ AUDOBON NATURE CENTER | $900 |
| AURORA FOUNDATION | $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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 48% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants spread fairly evenly across need levels.
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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 +67% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 12 since wound down; 5 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, 43% 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
- ABAmerican Bird Conservancy7× · 2017–2023 · $63k · revenue +54%
- WCWISCONSIN CONSERVATION VOICES INC6× · 2017–2022 · $30k · revenue +379%
WISCONSIN HUMANE SOCIETY5× · 2018–2023 · $19k · revenue +61%
Funded once
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue +34%- CFCOMMITTEE FOR OPEN DEMOCRACY INCone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue -100%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2018 · $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.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
The wisconsin wildlife federation has a dual mission to engage in conservation education and to advocate for sound conservation policy.
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.
Wisconsin principles (wp) is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization dedicated to preserving conservative values in the state of wisconsin. committed to fiscal conservatism, educational choice, and individual liberty, we strive to empower…
To protect, conserve, and enhance wisconsin's natural resources by advocating for and supporting county conservation efforts, for current and future generations.
To advance progressive values, ideas and policies through research, policy, networking, advocacy and public education.
The purpose of the wisconsin public radio association (wpra) is to support wisconsin public radio by engaging in cooperative fundraising, stewardship and advocacy. the wpra generates support through programs and participatory activities…
To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.
The Wisconsin Public Broadcasting Foundation WPBF supports the work of the Educational Communications Board ECB a State of Wisconsin agency committed to ensuring that public media and public safety programs and services are available…
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…
We seek, discover, and disclose true and accurate information to enhance the effectiveness of government and public policy in southeastern Wisconsin; and we facilitate public policy discussion and action.
The wisconsin maritime museum connects all people with wisconsin's waterways, by engaging and educating the public about wisconsin's maritime history, wisconsin's world war ii submarines, uss cobia, and the great lakes. the wisconsin…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wisconsin Conservation Voices Inc and the most unlike its peers is Committee for Open Democracy Inc. 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 33 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 14% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 37 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 American Bird Conservancy ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN CONSERVATION VOICES INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF SCHLITZ AUDUBON NATURE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LAKE MICHIGAN BIRD OBSERVATORY ↗
- Who funds THE WISCONSIN SOCIETY FOR ORNITHOLOGY INC ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN BIRDING ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds COMMITTEE FOR OPEN DEMOCRACY INC ↗
- Who funds HUNGER TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds RADIO MILWAUKEE INC ↗
- Who funds University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN PROGRESS INC ↗
- Who funds RESTORING LANDS INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN PROGRESS INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ARTS AND LETTERS ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds THE BARACK OBAMA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROCKFORD FAMILY PLANNING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF GREEN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds THE 1947 PARTITION ARCHIVE ↗
- Who funds MADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP MANITO-WISH YMCA INC ↗
- Who funds BRADLEY FAMILY FOUNDATION 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: The Brookby Foundation · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Natural Resources Foundation Of · Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation Inc · Madison Community Foundation · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Ge Aerospace Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 Rusinow Family Charitable 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.