· Private foundation
The James and Eloise Elmen Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k7 grants · $27k
- $10k–50k9 grants · $155k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $312k
- $250k+1 grant · $350k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| AVERA | $350,000 |
| SOUTH DAKOATA PARKS WILDLIFE FDN | $90,000 |
| ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF SIOUX FALLS | $90,000 |
| AUGUSTANA COLLEGE | $66,000 |
| SOUTH DAKOTA PARKS WILDLIFE FDN | $66,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $30,000 |
| SIOUX FALLS CARES | $20,000 |
| MIDWEST HONOR FLIGHT | $20,000 |
| AMERICAN LEGION CHARITIES | $20,000 |
| CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| BANQUET | $15,000 |
| FISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FDN | $10,000 |
| MAKE A WISH OF SD | $10,000 |
| APRO CHARITABLE FDN | $5,000 |
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 (FY18–23, $25k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 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 +79% since the first grant, against +54% for the ones you funded once.
36 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2024, 20 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 51% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $410k 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
- AUAUGUSTANA UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION8× · 2017–2024 · $818k · revenue +79%
- SHSANFORD HEALTH FOUNDATION5× · 2017–2023 · $700k · revenue +262%
- SFSIOUX FALLS ZOO & AQUARIUM8× · 2017–2024 · $475k · revenue +131%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $40k
- BDBISHOP DUDLEY HOUSEone grant, 2020 · $15k
- FSFEEDING SOUTH DAKOTAone grant, 2020 · $15k · revenue -11%
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.
Advancing healthy communities through a unified voice across the health care continuum.
Sd voices for peace provides five programming areas to assist vulnerable communities access services throughout the state: legal services, multilingual outreach, training and education, advocacy and civic engagement and rapid response.
The university of sioux falls, a christian university in the liberal arts tradition, educates students in the humanities, sciences and professions. the traditional motto of the university is culture for service, that is, we seek to foster…
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.
To offer leadership, involvement and support; encouraging the membership to professionally achieve their goals and serve all in the spirit of the golden rule.
Our mission is to strengthen the university of iowa through alumni engagement. we do this through our communications, alumni programs, and events.
End hunger together.
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
American foreign service association (afsa) is both the principal advocate for the long-term institutional wellbeing of the professional career foreign service and responsible for safeguarding the interest of afsa members. (continued on…
Downtown Sioux Falls boldly leads the downtown community by championing diverse experiences, economic growth, and a healthy environment.
The university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Volunteers of America Northern Rockies and the most unlike its peers is National Ataxia Foundation Incorporated. 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 33 years old; the field is 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 7% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 54 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 AUGUSTANA UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds SANFORD HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SIOUX FALLS ZOO & AQUARIUM ↗
- Who funds SOUTH DAKOTA PARKS AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY OF SOUTH DAKOTA ↗
- Who funds BUTTERFLY HOUSE & AQUARIUM INC ↗
- Who funds SIOUX FALLS CARES INC ↗
- Who funds FISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE GLORY HOUSE OF SIOUX FALLS ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MIDWEST HONOR FLIGHT - IA & SD ↗
- Who funds THE BANQUET ↗
- Who funds FAMILY VISITATION CENTER ↗
- Who funds HANDI RIDERS INC ↗
- Who funds DOW RUMMEL VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF LEVITT SHELL SIOUX FALLS ↗
- Who funds FEEDING SOUTH DAKOTA ↗
- Who funds Young America's Foundation ↗
- Who funds SIOUX FALLS AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds VOLUNTEERS OF AMERICA NORTHERN ROCKIES ↗
- Who funds APRO CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON PAVILION MANAGEMENT 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: Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation Inc · Sanford Group Return · Midcontinent Foundation · The Robert and Rita Elmen Foundation · Avera Health · South Dakota Community Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Greg and Pam Sands Foundation · Sheldon F Reese Foundation · The Mike Cindy and Kylie Huether Family Foundation · Larson Foundation · Sfs 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 James and Eloise Elmen 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 The James and Eloise Elmen Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The James and Eloise Elmen 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.