· Private foundation
Tomson Family Foundation Trust
Its FY2025 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k53 grants · $152k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $274k
- $50k–250k9 grants · $540k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST OLAF COLLEGE | $125,000 |
| VESTERHEIM NORWEIGAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM | $65,000 |
| EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA | $50,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| MASON CITY FOUNDATIONMUSIC MAN SQUARE | $50,000 |
| MASON CITY YMCA & REHABILITATION CENTER | $50,000 |
| CLEAR LAKE CLASSICAL | $50,000 |
| WALDORF LUTHERAN COLLEGE | $50,000 |
| ELCA WORLD HUNGER | $50,000 |
| NORWEGIAN AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $28,500 |
| 43 NORTH IOWA | $26,000 |
| LUTHER SEMINARY | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| CEDAR SUMMERSTOCK THEATRE | $25,000 |
| WARTBURG COLLEGE | $25,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $101k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 87% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of Tomson Family Foundation Trust’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 78% of the giving stays in IA; read by stated purpose it is 72% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +6% for the ones you funded once.
79 repeat relationships — 63 still active in FY2025, 16 since wound down; 16 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $82k 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
- UOUNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA FOUNDATION6× · 2020–2025 · $1.6M · revenue +7%
- VNVESTERHEIM NORWEGIAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM6× · 2020–2025 · $350k · revenue +117%
- SOST OLAF COLLEGE6× · 2020–2025 · $300k · revenue +57%
Funded once
- ELEVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICAone grant, 2020 · $50k
- NBNEW BEGINNINGS HOUSE OF HOPEone grant, 2023 · $16k
- RCRIVER CITY SCULPTURES ON PARADE INgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $15k · revenue +147%
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.
The foundation is organized to further the growth and development of private colleges and universities of higher education in iowa.
The iowa gold star military museum's mission is to honor and depict the military experience of iowa citizens in all wars, homeland defense and iowa service. the museum's purpose is to collect, preserve and exhibit materials that illustrate…
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 strengthen the university of iowa through alumni engagement. we do this through our communications, alumni programs, and events.
To facilitate the lifetime connection of alumni, students, and friends with iowa state university and each other.
The objective, powers, and purposes of this association shall be to associate the members thereof together into a society for the purpose of promoting the interests and welfare of iowa cooperatives by any appropriate means but specifically…
To excite, engage and educate through the arts.
The bureau is organized for the purpose of advancing the economic vitality and quality of life for residents and visitors as iowa's premier destination.
The university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
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…
To improve member newspapers
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Girl Scouts of Greater Iowa and the most unlike its peers is Reason Outdoors 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 38 years old; the field is 38. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 3% 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.
63 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 63 of the 132 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 NORTHERN IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VESTERHEIM NORWEGIAN-AMERICAN MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds WARTBURG COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds ST OLAF COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CLEAR LAKE CLASSICAL INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds THE NAVAL INSTITUTE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds LUTHER COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds NORTH IOWA TRANSITION AND EMPLOYMENT SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Iowa Specialty Hospital Foundation - Clarion ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN LIGHTS ALLIANCE FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds CEDAR SUMMERSTOCK THEATRE ↗
- Who funds THE ARTISANS VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF NORTH CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds TLC The Learning Center ↗
- Who funds CEDAR VALLEY SEMINARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LAKE OCONEE FOOD & WINE FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds NEWMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM FOUND ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL 19TH AMENDMENT SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds STEBENS CHILDREN'S THEATRE ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN PASSENGER TRAIN HISTORY MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds OCONEE PERFORMING ARTS SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds HAWKEYE HARVEST FOOD BANK ↗
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: First Citizens Bank Charitable Foundation · Bertha Stebens Charitable Foundation · Farrer Endowment Foundation · The David & Phyllis Murphy Charitable Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · United Way of North Central Iowa · John K and Luise V Hanson Foundation · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Beth E Reinhart Charitable Trust · Kinney-Lindstrom Foundation Inc · Land O'Lakes Foundation · Victor M & Phyllis Frudden Meyer Family 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 Tomson Family Foundation Trust 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% 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 Tomson Family Foundation Trust?
Find your warmest path to Tomson Family Foundation Trust 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.