· Private foundation
The Karlson Family Foundation
Its FY2023 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k3 grants · $9k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $54k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $966k
- $250k+2 grants · $966k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| H CHRISTOPHER & JENNIE MAY REHNBERG CHARITABLE FUND | $482,943 |
| JON H REHNBERG CHARITABLE GIFT FUND | $482,943 |
| STEPHANIE'S GIFT FUND | $241,616 |
| DAGAN MCCANN CHARITABLE GIFT FUND | $161,123 |
| MCCANN AGEE CHARITABLE GIFT FUND | $161,123 |
| ANNA J MCCANN CONSERVATION FUND | $161,123 |
| GREGORY JOHN MOTYCKA FUND | $120,739 |
| STEPHANIE REHNBERG FUND | $120,739 |
| UPPER MERRYALL CEMETERY ASSOCIATION | $35,000 |
| DOUGLAS MURRAY CHARITABLE GIFT FUND | $18,800 |
| LYNDE POINT LAND TRUST | $5,000 |
| THE CHRISTIAN RELIEF FUND | $2,000 |
| FENWICK IMPROVEMENT FUND | $1,500 |
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 (FY17–22, $71k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 82% 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.
49 repeat relationships — 1 still active in FY2023, 48 since wound down; 12 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 2% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2.0M 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION6× · 2017–2022 · $86k · revenue +105%
- WQWARRIORS & QUIET WATERS FOUNDATION INC6× · 2017–2022 · $60k · revenue +236%
- SFSoul Friends Inc4× · 2019–2022 · $14k · revenue +198%
Funded once
- WWWOUNDED WARRIORS FAMILY SUPPORT INCgraduated3× · 2017–2019 · $8k · revenue +59%
- THThe Human Resources Dev Council of District IX3× · 2020–2022 · $8k
- PNPAWCATUCK NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER INCgraduated3× · 2020–2022 · $8k · revenue +55%
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.
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…
The connecticut humane society is the leading resource in the state for companion animal welfare, enriching the lives of families and communities through adoption services, medical care, education, and prevention of cruelty.
The new england air museum's mission is to preserve and present the story of aviation and aerospace, with an emphasis on new england's role, and the genius and inspiration that made it possible. the museum also seeks to inspire young…
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The nantucket conservation foundation owns, protects, and stewards over 9,000 acres of land and coastal shoreline, conserves nantucket's rare and significant natural resources, and engages in impactful ecological research to inform…
To promote, for the benefit of the general public, the conservation of land and water natural resources principally in, but not limited to, the town of kent, connecticut.
Dedicated to learning, personal growth, knowledge creation, and the betterment of society. the university engages students in aquiring the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to thrive in and contribute to a pluralistic, complex world.
Overview - founded in boston by pioneering landscape architect and open space visionary charles eliot in 1891, the trustees is the nation's first and the commonwealth's largest conservation and preservation nonprofit.
The purpose of the water research foundation (wrf) is a definitive research organization to advance the science of all things water to better meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. to engage exclusively in…
The norwalk seaport association, inc. offers a cultural, environmental, and historical journey to the norwalk islands. the sheffield island lighthouse and the light keeper's cottage provide a unique historical and educational venue which…
The maritime aquarium at norwalk seeks to ignite a connection to long island sound and the ocean to enrich the lives of all people and inspire action to protect our blue planet.
The hartford foundation for public giving puts philanthropy into action to create lasting solutions that result in vibrant communities within the greater hartford region. as the region's community foundation, it is a public, grantmaking…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Kent Volunteer Fire Department Inc and the most unlike its peers is B-Bold. 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 35 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% 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 13% 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.
48 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. 48 of the 98 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 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WARRIORS & QUIET WATERS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UPPER MERRYALL CEMETERY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds STAND UP AND PLAY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Soul Friends Inc ↗
- Who funds JACKSON HOLE THERAPEUTIC RIDING ↗
- Who funds THE UC DAVIS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WILD INSTINCTS INC ↗
- Who funds NO BARRIERS USA ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIORS FAMILY SUPPORT INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONNECTICUT RIVER FOUNDATION AT STEAMBOAT DOCK INC ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds PAWCATUCK NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BUILDING HOMES FOR HEROES INC ↗
- Who funds American Diabetes Association ↗
- Who funds NORTHVILLE VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT ↗
- Who funds KENT VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT INC ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE IN CRISIS INC ↗
- Who funds OUR RESCUE ↗
- Who funds ESSEX LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 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: The Connecticut Community Foundation · Babbitt Family Charitable Trust · The Kestrel Foundation · The Ellen Knowles Harcourt Foundation · Union Savings Bank Foundation Inc · Connecticut Humanities Council Inc · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Ibm International Foundation · The Ayco Charitable Foundation · The Chicago Community Trust · National Philanthropic Trust · Shell USA Company 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 Karlson 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- The Coral Restoration Foundation Inc — 16% of income from government
- Johns Hopkins University — 12% of income from government
- United Way of Coastal and Western Connecticut Inc — 11% of income from government
- Tri-State Center for the Arts Inc — 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 Karlson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Karlson 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.