· Private foundation
The Van Buren Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k22 grants · $80k
- $10k–50k11 grants · $291k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CITY OF KEOSAUQUA | $40,000 |
| VILLAGES OF VAN BUREN | $39,000 |
| VBC TRAILS ASSOCIATION | $38,000 |
| VAN BUREN HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $35,373 |
| VAN BUREN COUNTY COMMUNITY SCHOOL | $34,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $27,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| FARMINGTON EMERGENCY RESPONDERS | $15,000 |
| CITY OF FARMINGTON - EMS | $14,000 |
| BONAPARTE COMM IMPROVEMENT ASSN | $12,493 |
| INDIAN HILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FDTN | $10,000 |
| CHRIST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $7,200 |
| MILTON LIONS CLUB | $6,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA | $6,000 |
| IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY | $5,500 |
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 (FY19–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% 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.
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 +13% since the first grant, against +2% for the ones you funded once.
38 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2024, 16 since wound down; 11 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, 54% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $169k 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
- VOVILLAGES OF VAN BUREN INC6× · 2019–2024 · $213k · revenue +39% · 27% of their budget
- IHINDIAN HILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE4× · 2021–2024 · $13k · revenue +1%
- WPWILLIAM PENN UNIVERSITY2× · 2021–2022 · $9k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- ALAMERICAN LEGIONone grant, 2023 · $50k
- VBVAN BUREN CONSERVATION BOARDone grant, 2020 · $35k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $18k
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.
Cornell college offers an innovative and rigorous learning community where faculty and staff collaborate with students to develop the intellectual curiosity, creativity and moral courage necessary for a lifetime of learning and engaged…
Provide a liberal arts education with globally focused endeavors to provide an intellectually stimulating environment, promoting student competencies in communication, as well as critical and analytical thinking.
To ensure that the student body experiences balanced intellectual, psychological, social and spiritual development, aimed at enabling them to become active productive members of society where they live and work.
To educate students in the liberal arts through free inquiry and the open exchange of ideas.when grinnell college framed its charter in the iowa territory of the united states in 1846, it set forth a mission to educate its students "for…
Coker university is a student-centered, comprehensive university. it is dedicated to providing every student an academic curriculum based upon a uniformly excellent liberal arts core that enhances the structured development of key personal…
The college of wooster is a community of independent minds, working together to prepare students to become leaders of character and influence in an interdependent global community. (continued on schedule o)we engage motivated students in a…
Founded by the norwegian evangelical lutheran church in 1861, luther college is a four-year, residential liberal arts institution. luther welcomes students of all backgrounds to engage in a way of learning that moves beyond immediate…
Equip students to live, learn, and grow in their faith, service, and calling through a Bachelor of Arts in Business framed by a Christian worldview with no student loans.
To provide a dynamic learning environment built on our aeronautical heritage that inspires a diverse and committed community of students to achieve success as leaders in the industries we serve.
The mission of cumberland university is to provide a personalized, high-quality, value-based educational experience that equips learners to lead, serve, and excel in an ever-evolving world.
Geneva college is a christ-centered academic community that provides a comprehensive education to equip students for faithful and fruitful service to god and neighbor.
Raritan Valley Community College is an educational community that works to develop critical thinking, foster intellectual curiosity, promote leadership, encourage social responsibility and support personal growth.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Indian Hills Community College and the most unlike its peers is Van Buren County Historical Society. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 23 years old; the field is 32. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
10 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. 10 of the 119 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.
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: William M & Donna J Hoaglin Foundation Inc · Quad Cities Community Foundation · Harry and Winnie McNay Education Trust · Moore Scholarship Trust · Pella Rolscreen Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Van Buren Foundation Inc 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.