· Private foundation
Silver Lining Foundation Inc
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 $10k16 grants · $48k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $88k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $226k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| REACH DANE - RED ARROW | $83,000 |
| STARTINGBLOCK MADISON INC | $75,000 |
| TODAY NOT TOMORROW | $68,268 |
| COLLABORATIVE 523 INC | $41,700 |
| LAKE RIPLEY MANAGEMENT DISTRICT | $19,000 |
| ROOTED | $15,000 |
| CAMBRIDGE ARTS COUNCIL INC | $12,500 |
| ALDO LEOPOLD SCHOOL PARENT FACULTY | $9,200 |
| NORTHPORT COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTER | $9,048 |
| THREE GAITS INC | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| LAKEVIEW ELEMENTARY PTO | $2,600 |
| MADISON NORTHSIDE PLANNING COUNCIL INC | $2,500 |
| BREAKTHROUGH T1D | $2,500 |
| WISCONSIN TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL INC | $2,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $31k) 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 +43% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 17 since wound down; 6 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; $26k 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
- WRWAYFORWARD RESOURCES INC5× · 2017–2022 · $26k · revenue +74%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION3× · 2018–2025 · $11k · revenue +43%
- CHCAMBRIDGE HISTORIC SCHOOL FOUNDATIO3× · 2019–2025 · $10k · revenue +715%
Funded once
- LJLITTLE JOHN'S RESTAURANT INCone grant, 2021 · $45k · revenue -76%
- SISECTOR67 INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $8k · revenue +40%
- CACABRIDGE ARTS COMMITTEEone grant, 2019 · $5k
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.
Support research and innovation at the university of wisconsin - milwaukee by providing reserach funding, entrepreneurship support, and by engaging in corporate partnering activities to that end.
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.
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.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
Support, promote, and facilitate partnerships with and provide funding for innovative early-stage and startup companies to lessen the burdens of government by promoting economic development and creating sustaining jobs in wisconsin.
Make downtown madison an economically strong, equitable, inclusive, and vibrant place to live, work, and visit.
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
Wwbic opens the doors of opportunity by providing any individuals who are interested in starting, strengthening, or expanding businesses with access to resources such as financial products and quality business and personal financial…
To improve the health of the people of wisconsin by supporting and strengthening physicians' ability to practice high quality patient care in a changing environment.
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…
Creating a more inclusive venture capital and entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Unite the community to achieve measurable results that change lives.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Madison Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Vegas City Opera Formerly Sin City Opera. 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 25 years old; the field is 10. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 32% startups (under 5 years old) — 9% of your grantees by number, and just 59% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 6% lost their exemption, against 18% 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.
39 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. 39 of the 82 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 STARTINGBLOCK MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds LITTLE JOHN'S RESTAURANT INC ↗
- Who funds ROOTED WI INC ↗
- Who funds WAYFORWARD RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CAMBRIDGE HISTORIC SCHOOL FOUNDATIO ↗
- Who funds SECTOR67 INC ↗
- Who funds THREE GAITS INC ↗
- Who funds ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds PORCHLIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST SIDE SHERMAN YOUTH BASKETBALL ↗
- Who funds IRWIN A AND ROBERT D GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CROSSCOUNSEL INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds BIKES FOR KIDS WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds MELLOWHOOD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CULTURAL CONNECTIONS 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: Madison Community Foundation · Madison Gas and Electric Foundation Inc · The Evjue Foundation Inc · Trustage Foundation Inc · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · United Way of Dane County Inc · Widen Family Foundation Inc · Endres Manufacturing Foundation Inc · First Business Charitable Foundation Inc · Ascendium Education Solutions Inc · The Roots and Wings Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation
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 Silver Lining Foundation Inc 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Silver Lining Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Silver Lining Foundation Inc through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.