· Private foundation
The Farwell Foundation Inc
Its FY2022 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
Read this first · the figures below need context
81% of The Farwell Foundation Inc’s FY2022 grant dollars went to American Endowment Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2022 names 2 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- $50k–250k1 grant · $97k
- $250k+2 grants · $3.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AMERICAN ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION | $2,601,483 |
| URBAN LEAGUE OF GREATER MADISON | $500,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION | $97,000 |
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 (FY18–18, $15k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 70% of The Farwell Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 66% of the giving stays in WI; read by stated purpose it is 28% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
The madison professional police officers association represents law enforcement professionals who serve the city of madison, wisconsin, as either police officers, detectives, investigators, or sergeants.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
Make downtown madison an economically strong, equitable, inclusive, and vibrant place to live, work, and visit.
The american civil liberties union of wisconsin, inc. (the union") protects and promotes the civil liberties and civil rights of all people in wisconsin in a non-partisan matter.
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.
Unite the community to achieve measurable results that change lives.
The league of women voters of wisconsin (lwvwi) is a nonpartisan political organization. we encourage informed, active participation in government and work to increase understanding of major public policy issues. we influence public policy…
The mission of the milwaukee bar association is to be an inclusive, equitable and diverse organization that serves the interests of the lawyers, judges and the people of milwaukee county by working to promote the professional interests of…
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.
The union works to advocate and advance a public policy agenda to support and protect the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of iowa. it works to maintain throughout the united states the rights of free…
United way of wisconsin is dedicated to supporting and enriching a strong statewide united way network that maximizes the capacity of local united ways to address human needs, improve lives and create lasting positive change across…
To attract, recruit, advance, and retain attorneys of color in the twin cities through education and collaboration with member organizations.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Madison Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Historic Charleston Foundation. 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 47 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 4% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 27 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 AMERICAN ENDOWMENT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MADISON COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN LEAGUE OF GREATER MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH SOCIAL SERVICES OF MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY JUSTICE INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD FEDERATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds MADISON ROTARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MADISON NORTHSIDE PLANNING COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds KNOX COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE ROTARY FOUNDATION OF ROTARY INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds OPERATION FRESH START INC ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOODBANK OF SOUTHERN WI ↗
- Who funds PORCHLIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL ACTION OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR COMMUNITY STEWARDSHIP ↗
- Who funds END DOMESTIC ABUSE WISCONSIN THE WI COALITION AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds IRWIN A AND ROBERT D GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DANE COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF PBS WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC CHARLESTON 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: Madison Community Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · United Way of Dane County Inc · Madison Gas and Electric Foundation Inc · The Roots and Wings Foundation Inc · Endres Manufacturing Foundation Inc · Trustage Foundation Inc · Ascendium Education Solutions Inc · Widen Family Foundation Inc · The Evjue Foundation Inc · Baird Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities 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 The Farwell 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 The Farwell Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to The Farwell 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.