· Public charity
United Way of Central Iowa
To improve lives by uniting the caring power of our community
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.
The 111 grants below total $12,379,769 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $17,845,205 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $5,465,436 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k9 grants · $73k
- $10k–50k46 grants · $1.3M
- $50k–250k42 grants · $4.2M
- $250k+14 grants · $6.8M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DMACC ANKENY | $763,711 |
| DES MOINES INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTR | $690,030 |
| OAKRIDGE NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICES | $644,917 |
| EVERYSTEP | $612,912 |
| CHILDREN AND FAMILIES OF IOWA | $547,981 |
| ORCHARD PLACE | $543,000 |
| DENTAL CONNECTIONS | $529,824 |
| LUTHERAN SERVICES IN IOWA | $405,996 |
| IOWA ASSOCIATION FOR THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG CHILDREN | $400,957 |
| BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF CENTRAL IOWA | $350,352 |
| YOUNG WOMENS RESOURCE CENTER | $339,240 |
| YMCA OF GREATER DES MOINES | $335,680 |
| HOME INC | $314,368 |
| YOUTH LAW CENTER | $287,376 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF CENTRAL IOWA | $249,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $32.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 3% 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.
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 6% of United Way of Central Iowa’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, 100% of the giving stays in IA; read by stated purpose it is 96% — 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 +34% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
141 repeat relationships — 109 still active in FY2025, 32 since wound down; 1 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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $55k 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
- OPORCHARD PLACE9× · 2017–2025 · $8.3M · revenue +11%
- VNVISITING NURSE SERVICES OF IOWA9× · 2017–2025 · $7.8M · revenue +183%
- DCDENTAL CONNECTIONS INC9× · 2017–2025 · $5.8M · revenue +29% · 29% of their budget
Funded once
- EIELLIPSIS INCgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $300k · revenue +38%
- EFEMPLOYEE & FAMILY RESOURCES INCone grant, 2017 · $137k · revenue +23%
- MHMID-IOWA HEALTH FOUNDATIONgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $100k · revenue +288%
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.
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.
Seeking to build a stronger, more caring community by forming partnerships with businesses, community experts, education & health & human service agencies to achieve targeted outcomes & sustained changes in community conditions which will…
To provide a highly structured environment which emphasizes a safety and security to all juveniles while serving as a deterrent to criminal and anti-social behaviors. Working youth in the center and communities.
To promote the development, growth and utilization of childrens advocacy centers and multidisciplinary teams to better serve Iowas abused and neglected children and their families.
Immigration counseling and advocacy for minority senior citizens
Through dynamic partnerships, quality family services, advocacy and education, neicac advances community development and improves social and economic conditions for individuals and families with limited resources.
Improve communications between employers and local unions.
To assist in the provision of a better life for iowa's low-income residents, through assistance to the community action organization located within the state.
The mission of the iowa center loan fund cdfi is to reduce proverty and inequality and further community development by providing access to capital to iowans starting or expanding a business who do not have access to traditional forms of…
Reach for your potential, inc is a provider of adult daycare services and rehabilitation/housing of disabled individuals serving approximately 135 individuals from iowa city and the surrounding communities.
To provide shelter and services to families experiencing homelessness
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Children and Families of Iowa and the most unlike its peers is Mid-Iowa Health 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 24 years old; the field is 55. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 7% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 4% 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.
141 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. 141 of the 184 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 ORCHARD PLACE ↗
- Who funds VISITING NURSE SERVICES OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds DENTAL CONNECTIONS INC ↗
- Who funds HOMES OF OAKRIDGE HUMAN SERVICES ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN AND FAMILIES OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds IOWA ASSOCIATION FOR THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG CHILDREN ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SERVICES IN IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds HOME OPPORTUNITIES MADE EASY INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN'S RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds THE YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF GREATER DES MOINES ↗
- Who funds YOUTH LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds Iowa Legal Aid ↗
- Who funds YOUTH EMERGENCY SERVICES & SHELTER OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds YOUTH AND SHELTER SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds CAMP FIRE HEART OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds WILLKIE HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds WESLEY COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDSERVE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL CONCERN INC CATHOLIC CHARITIES ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES AREA RELIGIOUS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN AND FAMILY URBAN MINISTRIES D/B/A CHILDREN AND FAMILY URBAN MOVEMENT ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FDN OF GREATER DES MOINES F/K/A GREATER DES MOINES COMMUNITY FDN ↗
- Who funds REFUGEE & IMMIGRANT VOICES IN ACTION ↗
- Who funds FAMILIES FORWARD ↗
- Who funds GOODWILL INDUSTRIES OF CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds PROJECT IOWA ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL IOWA SHELTER & SERVICES ↗
- Who funds IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds CAPITOL PARK EARLY LEARNING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF GREATER IOWA ↗
- Who funds IOWA ARTS IN EDUCATION DBA ARTFORCE IOWA ↗
- Who funds IOWA CONGOLESE ORGANIZATION AND CENTER FOR HEALING ↗
- Who funds GREATER DES MOINES HABITAT FOR HUMANITY 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: Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Mid-Iowa Health Foundation · Chrysalis Foundation · Variety - the Children's Charity of Iowa · Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation · EMC Insurance Foundation · The West Bancorporation Foundation Inc · Lsb Foundation · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · Ita Group Foundation · Golf Charitable Foundation of Greater Des Moines
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 United Way of Central Iowa 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.