· Private foundation
TrueNorth Legacy 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.
Read this first · the figures below need context
85% of TrueNorth Legacy Foundation’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 17 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2024, the last year TrueNorth Legacy Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 18 organizations, $590k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2023–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $260k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $325k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| YOUTH AND SHELTER SERVICES INC | $100,000 |
| COE COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| NEWBO CITY MARKET | $75,000 |
| GREATER CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE FOUNDATION | $25,000 |
| GROW CENTERVILLE | $25,000 |
| MARION PARK & RECREATION FOUNDATION INC | $25,000 |
| TANAGER PLACE | $25,000 |
| EASTERN IOWA HEALTH CENTER | $25,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE CORRIDOR | $20,000 |
| NATIONAL CZECH & SLOVAK MUSEUM & LIBRARY | $20,000 |
| INDIAN CREEK NATURE CENTER | $20,000 |
| REDEEMER LUTHERAN CHURCH | $15,000 |
| NATIONAL JEWISH HEALTH | $10,000 |
| IOWA DENTAL 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 (FY23–25, $249k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 90% 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.
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.
3 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down; 31 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call). Read against FY2024, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 22% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $416k 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
- CCCOE COLLEGE2× · 2024–2025 · $200k · revenue +8%
- TPTANAGER PLACE2× · 2023–2024 · $75k · revenue -2%
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE CORRIDOR3× · 2023–2025 · $50k · revenue -17%
Funded once
- TCTHE COMMUNITY THEATRE OF CEDAR RAPIDS INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $250k · revenue +181%
- CRCEDAR RAPIDS PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $75k · revenue +854%
- F2FOUNDATION 2 INCone grant, 2023 · $75k · revenue -7%
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.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
To provide primary health care to residents of the greater se iowa region, especially those individuals/families with limited resources or with other barriers to health care. see schedule o for additional information.
We, mercy medical center - centerville and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communitites. mercy medical center - centerville is a member of trinity…
We exist to serve our patients with compassionate health care of the highest quality.
Southeast iowa regional medical center is dedicated to improving the region's health by providing high-quality care, world-class customer service, and uncompromising value for our patients and their families.
Christian caring - enhancing lives through a commitment to individualized care in a home empowered by god's love.
Central community hospital's mission is to serve with fidelity to the gospel as a compassionate, healing ministry of jesus christ to transform the health of our communities.
Madison regional health system serves as a community health focal point through the provision of compassionate, quality, and innovative care.
Improving the health of the community through healing, caring and teaching.
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.
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.
To provide exceptional healthcare services in a safe and trustfulenvironment through the expertise, commitment and compassion of ourfamily of caregivers.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Monarch Research Project. 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 55. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 9% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 5% 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.
36 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. 36 of the 41 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 GREATER CEDAR RAPIDS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY THEATRE OF CEDAR RAPIDS INC ↗
- Who funds COE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds YOUTH AND SHELTER SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds NEWBO CITY MARKET ↗
- Who funds CEDAR RAPIDS PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CEDAR VALLEY HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION 2 INC ↗
- Who funds TANAGER PLACE ↗
- Who funds ST LUKE'S HEALTH CARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HORIZONS A FAMILY SERVICE ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds WAYPOINT SERVICES ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF THE CORRIDOR ↗
- Who funds STATE CENTER FIRE AND EMS ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds AFRICAN-AMERICAN HERITAGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE MARION PARKS & RECREATION ↗
- Who funds THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THE CEDAR RAPIDS METROPOLITAN AREA ↗
- Who funds EASTERN IOWA HEALTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds WELLSPRING COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds Grow Centerville ↗
- Who funds DISCOVERY LIVING INC ↗
- Who funds INDIAN CREEK NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL CZECH & SLOVAK MUSEUM & LIBRARY INC ↗
- Who funds PROSPECT MEADOWS INC ↗
- Who funds The Freedom Foundation ↗
- Who funds SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INC ↗
- Who funds CATHERINE MCAULEY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds DOGS FOREVER OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL JEWISH HEALTH ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF JOHNSON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds IOWA DENTAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds Moville Community Development Association Inc ↗
- Who funds MONARCH RESEARCH PROJECT ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL SPORTS CENTER FOR THE DISABLED INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDSERVE 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: Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · GreenState Credit Union · Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation · The Hall-Perrine Foundation · United Fire Group Foundation · The Accel Foundation · Lavern T Busse & Audrey Busse Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Rohde Family Charitable Foundation · United Way of East Central Iowa · The Kenneth K Kinsey Family Foundation · Hawkeye Area Community Action Program 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 TrueNorth Legacy 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.
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 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 TrueNorth Legacy Foundation?
Find your warmest path to TrueNorth Legacy 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.