· Private foundation
Thomas & Linda Koehn 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
- Under $10k4 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $85k
- $50k–250k8 grants · $637k
- $250k+7 grants · $4.7M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER DES MOINES | $1,400,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,150,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF GREATER DES MOINES | $602,000 |
| DENTAL CONNECTIONS | $575,000 |
| BY DEGREES FOUNDATION | $400,000 |
| DES MOINES SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION | $278,000 |
| NAPLES CHILDREN & EDUCATION FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| PRIMARY HEALTHCARE | $125,000 |
| DRAKE UNIVERSITY | $100,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL IOWA | $100,000 |
| DES MOINES METRO OPERA FOUNDATION | $84,000 |
| WESLEY LIFE MEALS ON WHEELS | $78,000 |
| VARIETY CHILDRENS CHARITY OF IOWA | $50,000 |
| HERITAGE CAROUSEL OF DES MOINES | $50,000 |
| EVERGLADES FOUNDATION | $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 (FY19–25, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 91% 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 +25% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
36 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 21 since wound down; 6 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, 52% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.6M 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
- CCCORNELL COLLEGE6× · 2017–2024 · $2.0M · revenue +39%
- DMDES MOINES METRO OPERA FOUNDATION INC9× · 2017–2025 · $2.0M · revenue +49%
- GDGREATER DES MOINES BOTANICAL GARDEN8× · 2017–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +266%
Funded once
- YAYOUTH AND SHELTER SERVICES INCone grant, 2023 · $995k · revenue +16%
- DMDES MOINES ART CENTER EDMUNDSON ART FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $311k
- IPIOWA PUBLIC RADIO INCone grant, 2023 · $250k · revenue -20%
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.
To improve lives in our global community by educating diverse groups of highly competent and compassionate health professionals.
The university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
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.
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.
To excite, engage and educate through the arts.
Depauw university develops leaders the world needs through an uncommon commitment to the liberal arts. depauw's diverse and inclusive learning and living experience, distinctive in its rigorous intellectual engagement and its global and…
Our mission is to strengthen the university of iowa through alumni engagement. we do this through our communications, alumni programs, and events.
Our mission is to advance the practice of medicine through advocacy, education, and engagement with physicians throughout iowa to ensure the highest quality of care for the patients they serve.
This member-supported organization protects and restores iowa's land, water and wildlife for future generations. priorities include permanent land protection, promotion of improved land management and bringing new conservation…
The university of iowa center for advancement's mission is to advance the university of iowa through engagement and philanthropy. we serve our alumni and friends in the state and the region, throughout the country, and around the world. we…
Our mission is to inspire the iowa city area to be greater by: 1) elevating business, 2) investing in strategic initiatives, and 3) advocating for the economic resiliency of the greater community.
None
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Des Moines Community Playhouse and the most unlike its peers is World Food Prize Foundation. 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 38 years old; the field is 55. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 10% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% 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.
50 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. 50 of the 79 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 COMMUNITY FDN OF GREATER DES MOINES F/K/A GREATER DES MOINES COMMUNITY FDN ↗
- Who funds CORNELL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES METRO OPERA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER DES MOINES BOTANICAL GARDEN ↗
- Who funds SCIENCE CENTER OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds NAPLES CHILDREN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES WATER WORKS PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Edmundson Art Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES SYMPHONY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUTH AND SHELTER SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds DENTAL CONNECTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BY DEGREES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VARIETY - THE CHILDREN'S CHARITY OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds DRAKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IOWA PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds PRIMARY HEALTH CARE INC ↗
- Who funds HOYT SHERMAN PLACE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds NAPLES BOTANICAL GARDEN INC ↗
- Who funds THE CONSERVANCY OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA ↗
- Who funds HOPE MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES COMMUNITY PLAYHOUSE ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES HERITAGE CENTER ↗
- Who funds ELLIPSIS INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORIC ARNOLDS PARK INC ↗
- Who funds BROADLAWNS MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE EVERGLADES FOUNDATION INC ↗
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: Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Bookey Family Foundation · EMC Insurance Foundation · Meredith Corporation Foundation · Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · John Ruan Foundation Trust · The West Bancorporation Foundation Inc · Gartner Family Foundation % Michael G Gartner · Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust · Kyle J & Sharon Krause Family Foundation · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · William C Knapp Charitable Fdn
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 Thomas & Linda Koehn 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.
- Naples Botanical Garden Inc — 3% 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 Thomas & Linda Koehn Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Thomas & Linda Koehn 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.