· Private foundation
The Macdonald 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k22 grants · $62k
- $10k–50k19 grants · $404k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $225k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF NORTH CENTRAL WISCONSIN | $67,750 |
| ST PIUS X ST MATTHIAS | $57,500 |
| MARSHFILED CLINIC HEALTH SYSTEM FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| ASPIRUS HEALTH FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| WAUSAU & MARATHON COUNTY PARKS RECREATION & FORESTRY DEPARTMENT | $40,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF WAUSAU | $30,000 |
| THE NEIGHBOR'S PLACE | $28,500 |
| THE WOMEN'S COMMUNITY | $27,500 |
| GREATER WAUSAU PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP | $25,000 |
| MONK BOTANICAL GARDENS | $25,000 |
| BREAKTHROUGH T1D | $25,000 |
| BRIDGE STREET MISSION | $25,000 |
| NEWMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS | $25,000 |
| PERFORMING ARTS FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF NORTH CENTRAL WISCONSIN | $20,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $72k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 89% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 14% of The Macdonald Foundation’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 59% — 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.
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.
79 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2025, 49 since wound down; 14 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, 79% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $133k 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
- MCMARSHFIELD CLINIC HEALTH SYSTEM INC6× · 2017–2023 · $287k · revenue +219%
- AHASPIRUS HEALTH FOUNDATION INC8× · 2017–2025 · $212k · revenue +13%
- BTBREAKTHROUGH T1D9× · 2017–2025 · $193k · revenue +49%
Funded once
- COCity of Wausau - Athletic Parkone grant, 2020 · $119k
- MCMarshfield Clinic Health Foundationone grant, 2024 · $75k
- BNBasilica Nat'l Shrine of Our Lady of Consolationone grant, 2017 · $50k
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.
Promote a positive state legislative and regulatory climate for wisconsin's community health plans. the association communicates with regulatory agencies to promote issue positions representing community health plans.
To improve the health of the people of wisconsin by supporting and strengthening physicians' ability to practice high quality patient care in a changing environment.
We actively advocate, educate and support our members to help them positively impact the wisconsin communities they serve.
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.
Eliminating barriers to employment by providing pathways for those who are underserved, underrepresented and disadvantaged who have a goal of building skills that lead to sustained employment and improved financial stability.
The minnesota business partnership's mission is to maintain a high quality of life for all minnesotans by ensuring that the state's economy remains strong, globally competitive and its prospects for growth bright by working with elected…
We will stirve to make a significant difference in improving the quality of life of our members and the communities we serve by providing affordable access to credit and financial services.
To lead wisconsin in development and retention of science and tech-based businesses and to provide policy guidance to lawmakers, the governor of wisconsin, state agencies, and other institutions.
Reedsburg area medical center, always there, going beyond the expected to provide compassionate, quality, and efficient health care.
The organization is a cooperative, nonprofit corporation, incorporated under wisconsin state law to encourage thrift among its members, create a source of credit at a fair and reasonable cost, and provide an opportunity for its members to…
Extraordinary healthcare from the heart - one person at a time.vision: we will set the standard for community-based healthcare that improves the health and quality of life of the people we serve.
A cooperative, nonprofit corporation, incorporated under wisconsin state law to encourage thrift among its members, create a source of credit at a fair and reasonable cost, and provide opportunity for its members to improve their economic…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Aspirus Health Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is Greater Wausau Prosperity Partnership L Partnership Ltd. 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 39 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
59 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. 59 of the 123 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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF NORTH CENTRAL WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds ROLLING HILLS PREPARATORY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds MARSHFIELD CLINIC HEALTH SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds ASPIRUS HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds THE WOMEN'S COMMUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds PERFORMING ARTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORS PLACE INC THE ↗
- Who funds Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northcentral Wisconsin Inc ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S IMAGINARIUM INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY PARTNERS CAMPUS INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF THE ROGUE VALLEY ↗
- Who funds LEWIS & CLARK COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF GREEN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds MARSHFIELD CLINIC HEALTH SYSTEM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds K-TECH CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds Keep Area Teens Safe Inc ↗
- Who funds ROGERS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ASHLAND EMERGENCY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN AUTOMOTIVE AND TRUCK EDUCATION ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds WAUSAU YOUTH BASEBALL AND SOFTBALL 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: Ba & Esther Greenheck Foundation · Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin Inc · Incrediblebank Foundation Inc · Judd S Alexander Foundation · Church Mutual Insurance Company Foundation Inc · Dudley Foundation Inc · Dwight and Linda Davis Foundation · Abbybank Foundation Inc · George Kress Foundation Inc · Lewitzke Foundation Inc · Bell Family Charitable Foundation I · Green Bay Packers 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 Macdonald 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.
- Rogue Valley Farm to School — 17% of income from government
- Lewis & Clark College — 2% of income from government
- Oregon Shakespeare Festival Association Inc — 0% 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 Macdonald Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Macdonald 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.