· Private foundation
The Catherine Vincent Deardorf Charitable Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 79% of THE CATHERINE VINCENT DEARDORF CHARITABLE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $70k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $293k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $75k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CITY OF FORT DODGE | $75,000 |
| HAWKEYE COMMUNITY THEATRE | $39,000 |
| UNITED WAY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $35,000 |
| CINEMATOGRAPHY FOR ACTORS INSTITUTE | $30,000 |
| FD SENIOR HIGH BAND BOOSTERS | $30,000 |
| FORT DODGE PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| COMEDIA MUSICA PLAYERS | $25,000 |
| FD CSD SENIOR HIGH CHOIR BOOSTERS | $20,150 |
| FORT DODGE HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| BLANDEN CHARITABLE FOUNDATION | $19,000 |
| DAYTON PUBLIC LIBRARY | $14,600 |
| PRESERVE FORT DODGE INC | $13,248 |
| FD COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $12,250 |
| AFES | $10,000 |
| FORT DODGE CHORAL SOCIETY | $9,076 |
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 (FY23–23, $2k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
47 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2025, 27 since wound down; 7 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, 81% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $84k 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
- BCBlanden Charitable Foundation9× · 2017–2025 · $154k · revenue +103%
- HCHawkeye Community Theatre6× · 2017–2025 · $134k · revenue +29% · 52% of their budget
- GSGIRL SCOUTS OF GREATER IOWA5× · 2020–2025 · $18k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- FDFORT DODGE COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2020 · $51k
- FCFD CSD SENIOR HIGH VOCALone grant, 2020 · $30k
- FDFORT DODGE BAND BOOSTERSone grant, 2022 · $25k
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.
Promotion of and presentation of dramatic arts
The organization promotes, develops and advances the business community in iowa city and the surrounding area. in addition, the organization connects business and industry with federal, state and local resources to enable and stimulate…
Iowa dance theatre's mission is to raise awareness, develop appreciation, increase opportunities and support dance as a performing art within our community.
The mission of the fort madison chamber of commerce is to promote retail and commercial development as well as tourism in fort madison and the surrounding area.
The greater des moines public art foundation places art in public spaces through public and private collaborations.
Raise funds to support area school district.
Facilitate economic opportunity, business success, community engagement, prosperity, and quality of life for rural western iowa
To build community endowments, be a resource for a broad range of community needs (arts and culture, education, health and human services, historic preservation, etc.) and to assist donors by offering a variety of giving options.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Upper Des Moines Opportunity Inc and the most unlike its peers is Friends of Webster County Conservation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 19 years old; the field is 32. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 22% of your grantees by number, and just 9% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 7% 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.
19 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. 19 of the 91 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.
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: United Way and Community Foundation of Greater Fort Dodge · Ann Smeltzer Charitable Trust · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Siefer Charitable Tua Xxx-Xx-Xxxx · James W and Frances M Ackerman Charitable Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation 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 The Catherine Vincent Deardorf Charitable 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.
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How do I get to The Catherine Vincent Deardorf Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Catherine Vincent Deardorf Charitable 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.