· Public charity
United Way of Spencer
UNITED WAY OF SPENCER distributes funds to local charities that have been collected in an organized concise manner from the public during its annual fund drive.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 11 grants below total $664,565 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $700,055 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $35,490 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 $10k6 grants · $42k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $107k
- $250k+1 grant · $516k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| HARTLEY COMMUNITY DAYCARE | $516,000 |
| AMERICAN RED CROSS | $47,500 |
| GRAND AVENUE OUTREACH | $23,515 |
| UPPER DES MOINES OPPORTUNITY | $22,800 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES | $12,750 |
| SPENCER FAMILY YMCA | $9,000 |
| ATLAS OF SPENCER | $7,500 |
| FRIENDS OF EVERLY PUBLIC LIBRARY | $7,500 |
| FAMILY CRISIS CENTER | $7,000 |
| LUTHERAN SERVICES OF IOWA | $5,500 |
| ARTS ON GRAND | $5,500 |
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, $520k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 37% 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.
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 +15% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2025, 11 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $6k 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
- HCHARTLEY COMMUNITY DAYCARE3× · 2023–2025 · $580k · revenue +148%
- ANAmerican National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches3× · 2023–2025 · $195k · revenue +22%
- YMYOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOC OF SPENCER IOWA3× · 2023–2025 · $27k · revenue +7%
Funded once
- CCCLAY COUNTY COUNCIL ON AGINGgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $21k · revenue +78%
THE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $14k · revenue 0%- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $9k
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 provide advocacy and services for disadvantaged persons and bring about institutional change for the benefit of the people we serve and the community at large. (see schedule o).to achieve this mission, scicap operates programs to…
Immigration counseling and advocacy for minority senior citizens
Provide support, resources, and hope for a better future to persons affected by domestic abuse, sexual assault and other crisis.
Child day care center
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.
In partnership with state and federal government, our mission is to administer programs designed to help residents in our 10-county region of southwest iowa achieve self-sufficiency.
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.
The purpose of the family planning council of iowa is to assure access to quality reproductive healthcare and family planning for all people.
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.
To provide guardianship and trustee services to vulnerable individuals in iowa. services also include representative payee.
Central illinois agency on aging believes in the independence and dignity of older persons, and that each older person should be empowered to exert control over their own life & have access to needed services. we do planning, program…
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lutheran Services in Iowa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Atlas of Spencer. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 26 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 HARTLEY COMMUNITY DAYCARE ↗
- Who funds CENTERS AGAINST ABUSE & SEXUAL ASSA ↗
- Who funds GRAND AVENUE COMMUNITY OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds UPPER DES MOINES OPPORTUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF SIO SIOUX CITY ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOC OF SPENCER IOWA ↗
- Who funds ATLAS OF SPENCER ↗
- Who funds CLAY COUNTY COUNCIL ON AGING ↗
- Who funds ARTS ON GRAND ↗
- Who funds FAMILY CRISIS CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds THE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PEOPLE FOR PETS ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SERVICES IN IOWA 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: Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Siouxland Community Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Land O'Lakes Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Amazonsmile 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 United Way of Spencer 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to United Way of Spencer?
Find your warmest path to United Way of Spencer 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.