· Private foundation
Sandy Oaks Foundation Douglas W Caves
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 clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM | $650 |
| FOOD 4 KIDS BACKPACK | $525 |
| LITERACY NETWORK | $258 |
| UW FOUNDATION | $250 |
| KMS COYOTE BAND BOOSTERS | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY21–21, $128) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% 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.
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 +45% since the first grant, against +38% for the ones you funded once.
18 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 3 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, 50% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $883 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION5× · 2017–2024 · $323k · revenue +39%
- CFCloud Forest School Foundation3× · 2017–2023 · $35k · revenue +248%
- WDWISCONSIN DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN INC2× · 2018–2019 · $5k · revenue +281%
Funded once
American Players Theatre of Wisconsin Incgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $220k · revenue +38%
WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO ASSOCIATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $62k · revenue +66%- UWUNITED WAYone grant, 2017 · $48k
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.
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…
To protect, conserve, and enhance wisconsin's natural resources by advocating for and supporting county conservation efforts, for current and future generations.
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.
Midwest environmental advocates is a nonprofit law center that combines the power of law with the resolve of communities facing environmental injustice to secure and protect the rights of all people to healthy water, land, and air.
The natural resource development association supports policies that lead to proper, necessary, and conscientious resource development and conservation. by engaging community leaders, laborers, manufacturers, and job creators in the…
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.
The door county land trust is a local, non-governmental non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve door county's exceptional lands and waters forever.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
To cultivate civil discourse, increase understanding, and create common ground by connecting wisconsin people and ideas.
The mission of mississippi valley conservancy is to conserve native habitats and farmlands in the driftless area for the health and well-being of current and future generations.
Advance science-informed analysis and policy solutions that address wisconsin's greatest conservation challenges.
To preserve lands that protect our waters, landscapes and natural habitats in northeast wisconsin. ne wisconsin is critical to the health of the largest freshwater estuaries in the world-lake michigan's crucial wetlands.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Natural Resources Foundation of and the most unlike its peers is Kms Coyote Band Boosters 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 43 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
38 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. 38 of the 78 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 FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds American Players Theatre of Wisconsin Inc ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Cloud Forest School Foundation ↗
- Who funds THE CARTER CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds DRIFTLESS AREA LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA RIGHTS RESTORATION COALITION ↗
- Who funds GROUNDSWELL CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds PORCHLIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN WISCONSIN BIRD ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN DEMOCRACY CAMPAIGN INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE GEORGE AND BARBARA BUSH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OPERATION FRESH START INC ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES FOUNDATION OF ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds CLEAN LAKES ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SHARES OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds WAVE EDUCATIONAL FUND 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: Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Madison Gas and Electric Foundation Inc · Madison Community Foundation · The Evjue Foundation Inc · Lau & Bea Christensen Charitable Foundat · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Endres Manufacturing Foundation Inc · Trustage Foundation Inc · United Way of Dane County Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Schlecht Family Foundation Inc · The Roots and Wings Foundation 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 Sandy Oaks Foundation Douglas W Caves 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.