· Private foundation
The Nelson 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
- $10k–50k2 grants · $65k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $235k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DOWLING CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL | $100,000 |
| BY DEGREES FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| LIVING HISTORY FARMS FOUNDATION | $60,000 |
| EASTER SEALS OF IOWA | $35,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION | $30,000 |
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 (FY19–24, $118k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +21% since the first grant, against -1% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 1 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- LHLIVING HISTORY FARMS FOUNDATION4× · 2018–2025 · $190k · revenue +18%
- BDBY DEGREES FOUNDATION4× · 2020–2025 · $160k · revenue +39%
- AHANAWIM HOUSING INC2× · 2021–2022 · $50k · revenue +19%
Funded once
- ISIOWA STATE UNIVERSITYone grant, 2017 · $375k
- FBFOOD BANK OF IOWAgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue +42%
- DHDsquared Homes for the Homelessone grant, 2023 · $30k · revenue -9%
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.
Common good iowa engages iowans to create and advocate for research-based public policy that makes life better and more equitable for all who make iowa home.
The foundation for the iowa city community school district connects the community with our schools to ensure every student has extraordinary learning experiences. together we empower teachers and district staff and inspire students to…
Founded in 1995 as the philanthropic arm of the iowa credit union league and guided by the credit union philosophy of "people helping people", the iowa credit union foundation (the foundation) works to champion financial well-being for…
None
To build the foundation of lifelong learning by promoting the power of play.
To deliver programs and to conduct research for the benefit of students, educators, emerging leaders and employers that expand their knowledge and enhance their individual responsibility and leadership skills.
Seeking to put god's love into action, habitat for humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope to realize our vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live. greater des moines habitat for humanity…
Aligning donor passion and generosity to advance iowa state university's land grant ideals.
The iowa 4-h foundation provides financial resources for youth development through 4-h.
To provide shelter and services to families experiencing homelessness
To actively seek private funds (and to coordinate funds entrusted to its care) that ensure each student, regardless of his or her means, has the opportunity to reach his or her fullest potential.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children and Families of Iowa and the most unlike its peers is Guardian Scholars 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 38 years old; the field is 38. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% 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 6% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 52 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 LIVING HISTORY FARMS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BY DEGREES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ANAWIM HOUSING INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN AND FAMILIES OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds BEYOND THE FAIRWAYS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ABOVE AND BEYOND CANCER INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Dsquared Homes for the Homeless ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds EAST HIGH SCHOOL ALUMNI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ORPHAN CARE ALLIANCE INC ↗
- Who funds CAN PLAY ↗
- Who funds Iowa Legal Aid ↗
- Who funds IOWA SAFE SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE CENTER OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds PURSUIT OF INNOVATION ↗
- Who funds HEIFER PROJECT INTERNATIONAL ↗
- Who funds HOME OPPORTUNITIES MADE EASY INC ↗
- Who funds GUARDIAN SCHOLARS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Catching the Dream ↗
- Who funds KNOCK AND DROP IOWA ↗
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: Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · EMC Insurance Foundation · United Way of Central Iowa · Meredith Corporation Foundation · Chrysalis Foundation · Ita Group Foundation · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · Helen J and Thomas Nelson Urban Sr Charitable Foundation III · Fred Maytag Family Foundation · Krause Gentle Foundation · Golf Charitable Foundation of Greater Des Moines
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 Nelson 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 Nelson Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Nelson 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.