· Private foundation
Sms Foundation Inc
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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k34 grants · $176k
- $10k–50k27 grants · $305k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HODAN CENTER | $40,000 |
| MADISON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| END DOMESTIC ABUSE WI | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN INDIAN COLLEGE FUND | $10,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD USA | $10,000 |
| UW SCHOOL OF VETERINARY SCIENCE | $10,000 |
| DOMESTIC ABUSE INTERVENTION SERVICES | $10,000 |
| SAMUEL'S HOUSE | $10,000 |
| YWCA MADISON | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $10,000 |
| DANE COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY | $10,000 |
| URBAN LEAGUE OF GREATER MADISON | $10,000 |
| CHIEF BLACKBIRD CENTER | $10,000 |
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 (FY19–25, $160k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 50% of those 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.
63 repeat relationships — 42 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 17 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, 74% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $120k 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
- SHSECOND HARVEST FOODBANK OF SOUTHERN WI7× · 2019–2025 · $80k · revenue +89%
MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC7× · 2019–2025 · $75k · revenue +79%- MPMADISON PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC7× · 2019–2025 · $75k · revenue +20%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $10k
- CBCHIEF BLACKBIRD CENTER BLACK RIVER BANDone grant, 2019 · $10k
- HRHIPPS ROAD INCone grant, 2024 · $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.
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.
Mcad provides a transformative education within a community of support for creative students of all backgrounds to work, collaborate, and lead with confidence in a dynamic, interconnected world.
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
Promote a positive state legislative and regulatory climate for wisconsin's community health plans. the association communicates with regulatory agencies to promote issue positions representing community health plans.
The milwaukee institute of art and design's mission is to ignite curious minds through art, design and service. we value courage to seek our own path, integrity to pursue our lives and work with meaning, kindness to thoughtfully engage…
The mission of the organization is to foster the development of creative individuals as writers and artists and to promote public appreciation of excellence in the literary and graphic arts by publishing a magazine containing fiction,…
To promote public health, safety, and welfare through the improvement of the quality and quantity of drinking water and the development and furtherance of understanding of the problems relating thereto.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
To attract, recruit, advance, and retain attorneys of color in the twin cities through education and collaboration with member organizations.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
The minnesota business partnership's mission is to maintain a high quality of life for all minnesotans by ensuring that the state's economy remains strong, globally competitive and its prospects for growth bright by working with elected…
Our vision is for wisconsin to be the model for excellence in equitable school counseling practice, exemplified by the advocacy, leadership, and expertise of the members of the wsca.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is New Music Usa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Arts for Art 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 42 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) — 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 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.
51 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. 51 of the 88 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 HODAN COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOODBANK OF SOUTHERN WI ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FINE ARTS WORK CENTER IN PROVINCETOWN INC ↗
- Who funds FLORIDA KEYS SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS INC ↗
- Who funds DOMESTIC ABUSE INTERVENTION SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds SAMUEL'S HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds DANE COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN INDIAN COLLEGE FUND ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS ↗
- Who funds ARTS HORIZONS INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN HUMANITIES COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN LEAGUE OF GREATER MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds KANSAS CITY ART INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds GOD'S LOVE WE DELIVER INC ↗
- Who funds Young Men's Christian Association of Dane County Inc ↗
- Who funds ARTS FOR ART INC ↗
- Who funds KIVA MICROFUNDS ↗
- Who funds Recovery Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds CATHERINE MARIAN HOUSING INC DBA BETHANY APARTMENTS ↗
- Who funds MADISON MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED STATES FUND FOR UNICEF ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds CLEAN LAKES ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN 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 Gas and Electric Foundation Inc · Madison Community Foundation · Green Bay Packers Foundation · The Evjue Foundation Inc · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · John W Thompson and Jane a Bartell Charitable Foun · Endres Manufacturing Foundation Inc · United Way of Dane County Inc · The Roots and Wings Foundation Inc · Hooper Corp Foundation · The Oscar Rennebohm 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 Sms 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.
- Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Inc — 27% of income from government
- Arts Horizons Inc — 3% of income from government
- Samuel's House Inc — 0% of income from government
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 Sms Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Sms 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.