How much did THE SECOND STEP FOUNDATION grant in FY2025?

A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 46% of THE SECOND STEP FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars go to organizations outside the IRS cause taxonomy (common for large international and research funders), so a chart would be mostly “unclassified” and misrepresent the portfolio.

02beneath the categories

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.

…and in their own words, year by year

2018

—

2019

—

2020

food bankrivergreat

2021

food bankmealsrivergreathunger

2022

reduce hunger

2023

reduce hunger

2024

reduce hunger

2025

reduce hunger

Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.

03FY2025 · 29 grants

Where the money goes

Your grants by size, and where they go.

By grant size · FY2025

Under $10k1 grant · $400
$10k–50k28 grants · $600k

$20,000

Median grant

States reached

$2.8M

Total assets

Largest grants

GREAT PLAINS FOOD BANK$40,000
FEEDING SOUTH DAKOTA$40,000
SACRAMENTO FOOD BANK$20,000
FOOD BANK OF SIOUXLAND$20,000
ROCK RIVER VALLEY PANTRY$20,000
NORTH COUNTRY FOOD BANK$20,000
THE HOPE MARKET$20,000
GREAT FALLS COMMUNITY FOOD BANK$20,000
GREATER CHICAGO FOOD DEPOSITORY$20,000
DICSA - NUTRITIONAL SERVICES$20,000
SECOND HARVEST FOODBANK OF SOUTHERN WISCONSIN$20,000
FRIENDS IN NEED FOOD SHELF$20,000
BILLINGS FOOD BANK$20,000
NOW NUTRITION ON WEEKENDS$20,000
FOOD BANK OF IOWA$20,000

02The need

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.

show:

Your human-services grants (FY20–25, $210k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12% — the area typically sits at 10%. 71% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount

Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.

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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.

03Your edge

repeat funding

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%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.

$1.6M · 30 repeat orgs$430k to everyone else

And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +53% since the first grant, against +36% for the ones you funded once.

30 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 6 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

Total granted

$1.6M

$330k

Median revenue growth · since first grant

+53%

+36%

Still filing today

60%

39%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $100k went to new ones.

RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

Food & NutritionHuman ServicesCommunity ImprovementHealthEducationOther

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

GP
GREAT PLAINS FOOD BANK
6× · 2020–2025 · $220k · revenue +39%
FS
FEEDING SOUTH DAKOTA
6× · 2020–2025 · $140k · revenue +36%
FB
FOOD BANK OF IOWA
6× · 2020–2025 · $70k · revenue +165%

Funded once

PH
PROJECT HOPE
one grant, 2022 · $20k · revenue +25%
CC
CARBON COUNTRY FOOD
one grant, 2022 · $20k
NI
NORTHERN IL FOOD BANK
one grant, 2022 · $10k

Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Your field

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.

Missoula Food Bank & Community Center

We lead the movement to end hunger through activism, volunteerism and healthy food for all. we nourish community.

Food & Nutrition

The Food Bank for Central

Hunger relief network sharing millions of pounds of nutritious food with thousands of missourians.

Food & Nutrition

Food Bank of Northwest

To provide food to various charitable organizations and needy individuals in northwest indiana.

Food & Nutrition

Food for People Inc

Food for people is a designated food bank committed to providing food for those in need.

Food & Nutrition

Coralville Community Food Pantry

The Coralville Community Food Pantry is an anti-hunger nonprofit organization providing critical and innovative food assistance services to the greater Coralville community.

Food & Nutrition

Kansas Foodbank Warehouse Inc

To feed the hungry by soliciting and receiving food from local, regional and national food companies

Food & Nutrition

Sheboygan County Food Bank Inc

Lead sheboygan county's efforts to increase the food security of its residents by distributing healthy emergency food and fostering innovative partnerships.

Food & Nutrition

Second Harvest Foodbank of North Central

To grow hope in our region by creating pathways to nutritious food.

Food & Nutrition

High Plains Food Bank

The High Plains Food Bank collects, warehouses and distributes donated/purchased food and products to over 160 other partner, non-profit organizations throught the panhandle.

—

The Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas

The food bank of northeast arkansas provides hunger relief to people in need by raising awareness, securing resources, and distributing food through a network of non-profit agencies and programs.

Human Services

River Bend Food Reservoir

To lead the community-wide effort to end hunger in eastern iowa and western illinois. we will do this by leveraging partnerships to help people in need to stabilize their lives, educating and engaging the public on hunger issues,…

Food & Nutrition

Feeding Illinois

To educate the public about the role of food banks in addressing hunger.

Food & Nutrition

For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Food Bank for the Heartland and the most unlike its peers is Project Hope. 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.

the sector your giving your giving is ahead of the sector the sector’s ahead of you· dot size = how much the theme matters to each side

Ordered by the change in your giving — leaning in on top, pulling back at the bottom. The bar between the two dots is how out of step you are with the sector. Hover any row for detail.

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 42 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.

Closures · last 5 years

The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% of the field you don’t fund.

orgs you fund

0.0%0/32

the rest of the field

11%

206,164/1,819,533

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.

05the grantee network

32 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.

Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)

Early backer (in before they grew)

32/32

Grantees still filing

26/32

Grew since you first funded

Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee

Other$960,400Food & Nutrition$860,000Human Services$210,000Community Improvement$20,000Health$10,000Education$10,000

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.

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.

First Interstate BancSystem FoundationMT26.2× affinity11 shared granteesties to 11 of 11Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: First Interstate BancSystem Foundation · Land O'Lakes Foundation · Otto Bremer Trust · Hunger Solutions Minnesota · The Albertsons Companies Foundation · Feeding America · Xcel Energy Foundation · Enterprise Holdings Foundation · Food Finders Inc · Gianforte Family Charitable Trust · Greater Twin Cities United Way · Town Pump Charitable 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 organisation THE SECOND STEP 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.

2025

’20’21’22’23’24’25

no gov moneyreceives it· size = income

0get no government money at all

0rely on government for over half their income

⤢ axis zoomed · 0–40%

typical government reliance, FY20–25

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. 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.

05Through Plinth

Through Plinth

Your grantmaking, live and operational

This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: EDIBLE PRAIRIE PROJECT.

Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk

Financial management

low risk

~21 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 5 filed years.

Track record & reputation

low risk

5 years of Form 990 filings, still active.

Legal standing

low risk

US 501(c)(3); EIN 833655451 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.

Governance

Live in Plinth

Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.

Compliance & sanctions

Live in Plinth

OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.

Program capacity

Live in Plinth

Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.

Live · Plinth’s real DD engine

Run the actual assessment on EDIBLE PRAIRIE PROJECT, cold from public data.

Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.

Post-award monitoring · continuous checks

On trackFinancial stability— Roughly 21 months of cash on hand.
On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue grew over the period.
On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 8% of their budget — diversified.
Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.

What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.

Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing

Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.

Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro

How do I get to The Second Step Foundation?

Find your warmest path to The Second Step Foundation through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.

Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.

THE SECOND STEP FOUNDATION

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

32 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to The Second Step Foundation?

More from the funding graph

THE SECOND STEP FOUNDATION

What you funded, over time

Past the labels — and the year it shifted

Where the money goes

Do your dollars go where the need is?

Who you back again

Backed again, and grew

Funded once

32 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.

Government reliance of your grantees

Your grantmaking, live and operational

How do I get to The Second Step Foundation?

More from the funding graph