· Public charity
The McGowan Family Foundation
To operate exclusively for the benefit of, to perform the functions of, and carry out the purpose of the Omaha Community Foundation.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $9k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $241k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $761k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JDRF | $250,000 |
| Heart Ministry Center | $150,000 |
| Jesuit Academy | $120,000 |
| University of Nebraska Fdn | $100,000 |
| Westside Community SchoolsFdn | $100,000 |
| Completely Kids | $81,000 |
| Omaha Equestrian Foundation | $60,000 |
| Omaha Performing Arts | $50,000 |
| St Ignatius College Prep | $50,000 |
| College of Saint Mary | $50,000 |
| Revive Inc | $25,000 |
| Texas Christian University | $25,000 |
| North Star Foundation | $25,000 |
| Iowa State University Fdn | $25,000 |
| University of Southern CA | $25,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 97% of your 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 +36% since the first grant, against -1% for the ones you funded once.
25 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2024, 11 since wound down; 9 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $270k 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
- NMNEBRASKA METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION3× · 2020–2022 · $755k · revenue +36%
- BTBREAKTHROUGH T1D5× · 2020–2024 · $447k · revenue +42%
- HMHEART MINISTRY CENTER4× · 2021–2024 · $286k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- ODOMAHA DISCOVERY TRUSTgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue +28%
- KAKindair at the Benson Theatreone grant, 2020 · $25k · revenue -71%
- XFXCANCER FOUNDATIONone grant, 2021 · $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.
The primary mission of furman as a liberal arts institution is to provide a distinctive education in fine arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and the sciences, as well as selected professional disciplines.
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…
Our mission is to lead the world in transforming lives to create a healthy future for all individuals and communities through premier educational programs, innovative research and extraordinary patient care.
Children's physicians delivers the highest quality pediatric primary care while supporting education and research.
Northeast college of health sciences (the college) is committed to academic excellence, leadership, and professional best practices in the health sciences.
Nebraska wesleyan university is an academic community dedicated to intellectual and personal growth within the context of a liberal arts education and in an environment of christian concern.
The nmu foundation will establish and foster relationships to generate resources that benefit the strategic goals of northern michigan university.
Our mission is to strengthen the university of iowa through alumni engagement. we do this through our communications, alumni programs, and events.
The council of indepependent nebraska colleges foundation exists to provide operating funds and scholarship support for students attending nebraska's independent institutions of excellence.
To produce, in a humanistic tradition, health care professionals and biomedical knowledge that will enhance and extend the quality of life in our communities.
The mission of mit is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is University of Nebraska Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Xcancer Foundation. 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 40 years old; the field is 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 15% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 46 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 NEBRASKA METHODIST HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds HEART MINISTRY CENTER ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL & MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds OMAHA PERFORMING ARTS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds COMPLETELY KIDS ↗
- Who funds COLLEGE OF SAINT MARY ↗
- Who funds OMAHA EQUESTRIAN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OMAHA DISCOVERY TRUST ↗
- Who funds WESTSIDE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ↗
- Who funds Creighton University ↗
- Who funds NORTHSTAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DRAKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ECTODERMAL DYSPLASIAS ↗
- Who funds Omaha Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds WASHBURN UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MUSEUM OF NEBRASKA ART ↗
- Who funds SIENA FRANCIS HOUSE ↗
- Who funds ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION FOR A NEW AMERICAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Kindair at the Benson Theatre ↗
- Who funds XCANCER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE WINSTON PREPARATORY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL FRAGILE X FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds City of Omaha Police Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds REVIVE INC ↗
- Who funds IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GREATER OMAHA ALLIANCE FOR BUSINESS ETHICS ↗
- Who funds THE CANCER FUND INC ↗
- Who funds NEBRASKA GREATS 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: The Lozier Foundation · The Sherwood Foundation · Robert B Daugherty Foundation · Dr C C and Mabel L Criss Memorial · The Holland Foundation · The Hawks Foundation · The Charles and Mary Heider Family Foundation · Jewish Federation of Omaha Foundation · Nebraska Community Foundation · Mammel Family Foundation · Peter Kiewit Foundation · Parker Family 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 McGowan 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 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 McGowan Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The McGowan 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.