· Public charity
United Way of North Central Iowa
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 improve the lives of Iowans.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 15 grants below total $239,900 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $256,000 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $16,100 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 $10k5 grants · $36k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $204k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Crisis Intervention | $38,000 |
| Community Kitchen | $37,500 |
| NICAO - Outreach | $25,000 |
| Francis LauerYth Social Serv | $24,000 |
| NIACOG Housing Trust Fund Inc | $20,000 |
| 43 North Iowa | $16,000 |
| IJAG | $13,000 |
| Charlie Brown Comm Daycare | $10,500 |
| Cedar Valley Friends of the F | $10,000 |
| Elderbridge | $10,000 |
| Mason City Youth Task | $8,000 |
| NI Child Abuse Prevention Cou | $7,500 |
| Catholic Charities | $7,400 |
| FOOD BANK OF IAHAWK HARVEST | $7,000 |
| Mason City Family YMCA | $6,000 |
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 (FY18–25, $137k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 100% 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.
24 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down.
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; $0 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
- CKCOMMUNITY KITCHEN OF NORTH IA INC7× · 2019–2025 · $194k · revenue +387%
- NINorth Iowa Community Action Organization8× · 2018–2025 · $180k · revenue +28%
- NINORTH IOWA TRANSITION AND EMPLOYMENT SERVICES INC8× · 2018–2025 · $157k · revenue +161%
Funded once
- CHCOMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER OF FORT DODGE INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $21k · revenue +39%
- NINORTH IOWA YOUTH FOR CHRISTone grant, 2018 · $15k · revenue +6%
- TTTLC The Learning Centergraduatedone grant, 2018 · $13k · revenue +46%
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 promote the development, growth and utilization of childrens advocacy centers and multidisciplinary teams to better serve Iowas abused and neglected children and their families.
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.
ICCJ assists children in custody disputes through child focused education and legal services. ICCJ provides education and legal services on a reduced fee or at no charge based on the ability to pay.
The organization receives, warehouses, and distributes salvageable food items to non-profit tax exempt member agencies to feed the ill, needy, and infants.
To empower individuals with disabilities to control their lives.
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.
Linn County Advocate, Inc., provides quality legal representation for indigent clients in criminal and juvenile cases at the state court level in Linn, Johnson, Benton, and Jones Counties in the state of Iowa.
To provide low-cost housing to eligible families.
Community action of eastern iowa respectfully partners with people to improve their health, finances, and education.
Mica helps families experencing poverty meet their needs, build on their strengths, and achieve their goals.
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 organization endeavors to provide safe emergency and transitional shelter and meals to homeless adults along with resource assistance to move clients beyond homelessness and toward independent living.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Iowa Transition and Employment Services Inc and the most unlike its peers is Osage Community Daycare. 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 33 years old; the field is 31. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 11% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 33 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 NIAD CENTER FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY KITCHEN OF NORTH IA INC ↗
- Who funds North Iowa Community Action Organization ↗
- Who funds NORTH IOWA TRANSITION AND EMPLOYMENT SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MEALS ON WHEELS OF MASON CITY INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF IOWA CASA & ICFCRB ↗
- Who funds NIACOG HOUSING TRUST FUND INC ↗
- Who funds IOWA JOBS FOR AMERICA'S GRADUATES INC ↗
- Who funds CHARLIE BROWN COMMUNITY DAY CARE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CEDAR VALLEY FRIENDS OF THE FAMILY INC ↗
- Who funds United Way of North Central Iowa ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque ↗
- Who funds Iowa Legal Aid ↗
- Who funds Elderbridge Agency on Aging ↗
- Who funds OSAGE COMMUNITY DAYCARE ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SERVICES IN IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds One Vision ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN LIGHTS ALLIANCE FOR THE HOMELESS INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER OF FORT DODGE INC ↗
- Who funds NORTH IOWA YOUTH FOR CHRIST ↗
- Who funds HAWKEYE HARVEST FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds TLC The Learning Center ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE SET ME FREE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds LATINAS LATINOS AL EXITO INC ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF NORTHEAST IOWA ↗
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: Farrer Endowment Foundation · First Citizens Bank Charitable Foundation · Bertha Stebens Charitable Foundation · The David & Phyllis Murphy Charitable Foundation · Tomson Family Foundation Trust · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Beth E Reinhart Charitable Trust · Stratford Foundation · Dorothy Ann Weitzel and Thomas F W · Cedar Valley United Way · Mercy Health Services - Iowa Corp
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 North 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.