· Private foundation
Single Step Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $6k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $114k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $100k
- $250k+1 grant · $267k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS FOUNDATION | $266,710 |
| THE SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| ALDO LEOPOLD FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| BOULDER LIBRARY FOUNDATION | $33,810 |
| GARDEN TO TABLE | $25,000 |
| NEWBERRY LIBRARY | $25,000 |
| CENTER FOR INTEGRATED AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS | $20,000 |
| ROCKY MOUNTAIN PBS | $10,000 |
| SAVANNA INSTITUTE | $5,000 |
| DRIFTLESS AREA LAND CONSERVANCY | $1,000 |
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 (FY20–20, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
17 repeat relationships — 9 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 1 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, 95% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $25k 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
- ALALDO LEOPOLD FOUNDATION INC6× · 2020–2025 · $365k · revenue +200%
- WHWISCONSIN HUMANITIES COUNCIL INC3× · 2020–2024 · $31k · revenue +13%
WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO ASSOCIATION INC2× · 2020–2021 · $4k · revenue +47%
Funded once
- EMEAST MADISON COMMUNITY CENTER INCone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +9%
- FOFRIENDS OF PBS WISCONSIN INCgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $7k · revenue +62%
- RVRIVER VALLEY HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2020 · $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.
To protect wisconsin's lands, waters, and wildlife by providing funding, leading partnerships, and connecting all people with nature.
To protect, conserve, and enhance wisconsin's natural resources by advocating for and supporting county conservation efforts, for current and future generations.
To preserve, promote, protect, and enhance wisconsin state parks, forests, trails, and recreation areas.
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.
Providing services to members in a fee-for-service model to help advance library services, primarily in the state of wisconsin.
The uw-green bay foundation furthers the mission of uw-green bay, a public university, by developing and increasing opportunities for students primarily in the areas other than those in which the state of wisconsin ordinarily makes…
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
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…
To empower and support wpra members by fostering professional growth, advocating for the parks and recreation profession, and enhancing the quality of life for communities across wisconsin through education, networking, and leadership…
To cultivate civil discourse, increase understanding, and create common ground by connecting wisconsin people and ideas.
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.
Advance science-informed analysis and policy solutions that address wisconsin's greatest conservation challenges.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Friends of Pbs Wisconsin Inc and the most unlike its peers is Growe Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
18 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. 18 of the 24 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 University of Illinois Foundation ↗
- Who funds ALDO LEOPOLD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SIERRA CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAVANNA INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF KICKAPOO VALLEY RESERVE INC ↗
- Who funds THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds NORTH LAKELAND DISCOVERY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN HUMANITIES COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds GROWE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ROCKY MOUNTAIN PUBLIC MEDIA INC ↗
- Who funds EAST MADISON COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF PBS WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF GOVERNOR DODGE STATE PARK ↗
- Who funds SOUTH CENTRAL LIBRARY SYSTEM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DRIFTLESS AREA LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
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 · Patagoniaorg · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 Single Step 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Single Step Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Single Step Foundation 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.