· Private foundation
The Robert and Rita 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 $10k2 grants · $6k
- $10k–50k37 grants · $675k
- $50k–250k15 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+3 grants · $2.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SD PARKS AND WILDLIFE FDN | $960,000 |
| GREAT PLAINS ZOO | $750,000 |
| AUGUSTANA COLLEGE | $721,707 |
| Individual grant recipient | $150,000 |
| ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE RES FDN | $150,000 |
| BRAIN & BEHAVIOR RESERACH COUNCIL | $150,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $101,000 |
| FALL AREA SINGLE TRACK | $100,000 |
| LEVITT FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| ABBOTT HOUSE | $100,000 |
| FEEDING SOUTH DAKOTA | $90,000 |
| SD PARKS AND WILDLIFE FDN | $75,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| TEACH FOR AMERICA | $50,000 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $406k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 25% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +55% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
73 repeat relationships — 30 still active in FY2024, 43 since wound down; 25 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, 85% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $670k 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 · $2.1M · revenue +79%
- SDSOUTH DAKOTA PARKS AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION8× · 2017–2024 · $1.8M · revenue +89% · 38% of their budget
- SFSIOUX FALLS ZOO & AQUARIUM8× · 2017–2024 · $835k · revenue +131%
Funded once
- SASF AREA COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $1.6M
- WAWegner Arboretum Societyone grant, 2023 · $300k · revenue -64% · 35% of their budget
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2023 · $250k
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.
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…
Health care services for the people of western nebraska and eastern wyoming.
The mission of the foundation for health care continuums is to strengthen each community we serve by providing a wide spectrum of housing and health care services that honor the evolving, aging population.
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.
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.
Together, we create a warm and welcoming community enriching the lives of those we support.
End hunger together.
To serve our communities by provding innovative and compassionate healthcare.
The university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
Southeastern north dakota community action agency (sendcaa) was formed in 1965 to provide a range of services and activities in a six county area designed to alleviate poverty and give low-income people the opportunity to improve their…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota and the most unlike its peers is Falls Area Singletrack Inc. 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 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
47 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. 47 of the 113 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 SOUTH DAKOTA PARKS AND WILDLIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SIOUX FALLS ZOO & AQUARIUM ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Wegner Arboretum Society ↗
- Who funds FEEDING SOUTH DAKOTA ↗
- Who funds CALL TO FREEDOM ↗
- Who funds THE ZACHARY & ELIZABETH M FISHER CENTER FOR ALZHEIMER'S RESEARCH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MDRC ↗
- Who funds THE BANQUET ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF SOUTH DAKOTA ↗
- Who funds ABBOTT HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds FALLS AREA SINGLETRACK INC ↗
- Who funds ST FRANCIS HOUSE OF SIOUX FALLS ↗
- Who funds SIOUX FALLS CARES INC ↗
- Who funds THE GLORY HOUSE OF SIOUX FALLS ↗
- Who funds Lunch is Served Inc ↗
- Who funds FACE IT TOGETHER INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY SERVICE INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY OF SOUTH DAKOTA ↗
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 · South Dakota Community Foundation · Midcontinent Foundation · Sanford Group Return · Avera Health · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · The Mike Cindy and Kylie Huether Family Foundation · Tenfold Foundation Inc · Sheldon F Reese Foundation · The James and Eloise Elmen Foundation · Levo Cares Foundation · Sioux Empire United Way Inc
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 Robert and Rita 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.
- Lutheran World Relief Inc — 47% 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 Robert and Rita Elmen Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Robert and Rita 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.