· Private foundation
The Butler Family 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 $10k49 grants · $124k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $293k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $100k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.9M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DUBUQUE MUSEUM OF ART | $1,062,365 |
| LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO | $500,000 |
| DUBUQUE COMMUNITY YMCA | $355,866 |
| AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | $50,000 |
| ILLINOIS NETWORK OF CHARTER SCHOOLS | $50,000 |
| DUBUQUE DREAM CENTER | $26,000 |
| JUDICIAL WATCH | $25,000 |
| MAYO FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION | $25,000 |
| INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE | $25,000 |
| BABSON COLLEGE | $25,000 |
| CLARKE UNIVERSITY | $25,000 |
| LIBERTY JUSTICE CENTER | $25,000 |
| THE LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE | $25,000 |
| FRIENDS OF HOMACHO | $15,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $676k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
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 +34% since the first grant, against +0% for the ones you funded once.
74 repeat relationships — 54 still active in FY2025, 20 since wound down; 9 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $20k 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
- DMDUBUQUE MUSEUM OF ART6× · 2020–2025 · $16M · revenue +38% · 29% of their budget
- LOLyric Opera of Chicago5× · 2020–2025 · $2.2M · revenue +34%
- UOUNIVERSITY OF DUBUQUE5× · 2020–2025 · $782k · revenue +91%
Funded once
- NMNATIONAL MISSISSIPPI RIVER MUSEUM & AQUARIUM (DUBUQUE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCone grant, 2020 · $1.5M
- LOLYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO --PLEDGE 2021-2025one grant, 2021 · $500k
- BABOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF GREATER DUBUQUEone grant, 2023 · $200k · revenue +0%
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.
Illinois college is a co-educational institution of higher education learning providing a four-year educational program leading to the baccalaureate degree. illinois college is a community committed to the highest standards of scholarship…
Rooted in the liberal arts & sciences & lutheran expression of the christian faith, & is committed to offering a challenging education that develops qualities of mind, spirit, & body necessary for a rewarding life of leadership & service…
Engages, equips and empowers learners to explore their vocations, fulfill their potential and serve the world.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
Provide post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree. Program service expenditures are made in conjunction with the operation of a liberal arts college spread over 107 acres with approximately 63 educational and support…
The foundation works to defend and promote the constitution of the united states, focusing especially on the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and 14th amendments. the foundation also works to defend and promote the constitution of the…
Benedictine University is an inclusive academic community dedicated to teaching and learning, scholarship and service, truth and justice, as inspired by the Catholic intellectual tradition, the social teaching of the Church, and the…
Columbia college improves lives by providing quality education to both traditional and nontraditional students, helping them achieve their true potential.
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
Saint anselm is a catholic, benedictine college providing all of its students a distinctive liberal arts education that incorporates opportunities for professional and career preparation. it does so in a learning community that encourages…
See schedule o.we are inspired by the ideals of our founder who, in 1896, emphasized respect for all people and ideas, who honored knowledge with practice, progress and the common good. our historical commitment to experiential learning…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Uplift Internationale. 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 49 years old; the field is 38. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 6% 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.
70 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. 70 of the 122 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 DUBUQUE MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ↗
- Who funds Lyric Opera of Chicago ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF DUBUQUE ↗
- Who funds DUBUQUE COMMUNITY Y ↗
- Who funds LAUREL SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds NOBLE NETWORK OF CHARTER SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds LIBERTY JUSTICE CENTER ↗
- Who funds ILLINOIS NETWORK OF CHARTER SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF GREATER DUBUQUE ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds DUBUQUE DREAM CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds Clarke University of Dubuque Iowa ↗
- Who funds BABSON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds TELLURIDE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LORAS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MISSISSIPPI DRIFTLESS REGIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds St Mark Youth Enrichment ↗
- Who funds Leadership Institute ↗
- Who funds INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AMERICANS FOR LIBERTY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JUDICIAL WATCH INC ↗
- Who funds Wellesley College ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER DUBUQUE ↗
- Who funds THE GRAND OPERA HOUSE ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AMERICANS FOR LIBERTY INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds FINLEY HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DUBUQUE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds Hillcrest Family Services 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: Heartland Charitable Trust · James B & Melita a McDonough Foundation · Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque · Dubuque Racing Association Ltd · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Sirk Family Foundation · Falb Family Charitable Foundation · Ay McDonald Charitable Foundation · Spahn & Rose Lumber Co Charitable Fdtn · Mathis Pfohl Foundation · The Klauer Foundation Trust Xxxxx5009 · The Wm M & a Cafaro Family 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 The Butler Family 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.
- Babson College — 3% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% 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 The Butler Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Butler Family 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.