· Private foundation
Thomas J Rolfs 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k13 grants · $268k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $280k
- $250k+3 grants · $825k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY | $300,000 |
| BURKE ACADEMY | $275,000 |
| MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY | $250,000 |
| MOWA | $180,000 |
| THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICINE AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DEVELOPMENT | $50,000 |
| VERSITI | $50,000 |
| CHRISTO REY JESUIT HIGH SCHOOL | $48,000 |
| SOUTHERN OREGON LAND CONSERVANCY | $30,000 |
| KETTLE MORAINE YMCA | $30,000 |
| WEST BEND FRIENDS OF PARKS AND RECREATION | $25,000 |
| AVSC | $25,000 |
| ANDEAN HEALTH | $25,000 |
| WEST BEND FULL SHELF FOOD PANTRY | $20,000 |
| TALL PINES CONSERVANCY | $15,000 |
| THRESHOLD FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $120k) land where the poverty rate runs at 6%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% 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.
22 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 7 since wound down; 3 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $80k 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
- MUMarquette University5× · 2021–2025 · $1.1M · revenue +16%
- GVGALLATIN VALLEY LAND TRUST2× · 2021–2022 · $150k · revenue +74%
- KMKETTLE MORAINE YMCA INC5× · 2021–2025 · $110k · revenue +17%
Funded once
- THTHE HAVEN FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $200k
- WCWASHINGTON COUNTY GOLF COURSE FUNDone grant, 2022 · $150k
- WDWORKING DOGS FOR CONSERVATIONone grant, 2024 · $100k
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.
Summit land conservancy works with utah communities to conserve land and water for the benefit of the people and nature.
The mission of the association is to inspire "deeper connection, better understanding, and enduring support for our public lands."
Our mission is conserving West Michigans ecologically critical land. We protect land by creating public nature preserves, providing support to communities and local governments in creating natural areas, and helping private landowners…
Inspire people to enjoy and protect birds through recreation, education, conservation, and restoration of the environment, upon which we all depend.
Protecting our shrub-steppe and connecting people to this vanishing landscape.
Conservation legacy engages future leaders who protect, restore, and enhance our nation's lands through community-based service.in 2024, conservation legacy engaged 2,524 participants who completed over 1.5 million service hours on public…
Sierra watch secures conservation outcomes to protect the natural resources, mountain communities, and timeless values of the tahoe sierra.
The mission of gtrlc is to protect significant natural, scenic and farm lands and advance land stewardship now and for future generations.
The wyoming outdoor council's mission is to protect wyoming's environment and quality of life now and for future generations.
To conserve the unique character of tennessee's natural and historic landscapes and sites for future generations.
Our mission is to protect the rural nature of Wallowa County by working cooperatively with private landowners,indigenous people, local communities and governmental entities to conserve land.
Preserve in perpetuity the natural habitats, rural landscapes, and open spaces of the great peninsula of washington's puget sound.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Gathering Waters Inc and the most unlike its peers is Marquette University. 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 32 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 8% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 54 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 University of Notre Dame du Lac ↗
- Who funds Marquette University ↗
- Who funds CEDAR LAKES CONSERVATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WEST BEND COMMUNITY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds GALLATIN VALLEY LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds KETTLE MORAINE YMCA INC ↗
- Who funds HOLDERNESS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds VERSITI INC ↗
- Who funds HAVEN ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN OREGON LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds THE THRESHOLD FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE WASHINGTON COUNTY HUMANE SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds TALL PINES CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ANDEAN HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds GATHERING WATERS INC ↗
- Who funds KINGDOM TRAIL ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds Telluride Ski and Snowboard Club Inc ↗
- Who funds PERIMETER BICYCLING ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds AH HAA SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds The Pinhead Institute ↗
- Who funds USA CYCLING INC ↗
- Who funds The Perry Initiative ↗
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: Baird Foundation Inc · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · Oscar & Augusta Schlegel Fdn · West Bend Community Foundation Inc · Cornet Creek Foundation · Prescott Family Foundation Inc · Telluride Foundation · Colorado Gives Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Greater Horizons · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Boston Foundation 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 Thomas J Rolfs 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.
- Kingdom Trail Association Inc — 14% 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 J Rolfs Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Thomas J Rolfs 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.