· Private foundation
Van G Miller Family Charitable 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.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 65% of VAN G MILLER FAMILY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $5k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $192k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $572k
- $250k+4 grants · $1.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNI FOUNDATION | $400,000 |
| WATERLOO LEISURE SERVICES | $400,000 |
| ALLEN FOUNDATION | $300,000 |
| YWCA | $275,000 |
| NORTHEAST IOWA FOOD BANK | $150,000 |
| RIVER HILLS SCHOOLS | $150,000 |
| IOWA HEARTLAND HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $145,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $76,564 |
| Individual grant recipient | $50,000 |
| WATERLOO PUBLIC LIBRARY | $36,000 |
| JESUP COMMUNITY RECREATION DEPT | $25,000 |
| TRY PIE | $25,000 |
| AMERICANS FOR INDEPENDENT LIVING | $25,000 |
| JOB FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| CEDAR VALLEY BRIDGES OUT OF POVERTY | $16,000 |
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, $955k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +11% since the first grant, against -13% for the ones you funded once.
36 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 22 since wound down; 5 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $252k 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
- CVCEDAR VALLEY HOSPICE INC6× · 2017–2023 · $840k · revenue +65%
- IHIOWA HEARTLAND HABITAT FOR HUMANITY4× · 2021–2025 · $570k · revenue +104%
- NINORTHEAST IOWA FOOD BANK8× · 2017–2025 · $335k · revenue +69%
Funded once
- ACALLEN COLLEGEone grant, 2020 · $50k · revenue -13%
- HOHOUSE OF HOPEone grant, 2024 · $50k · revenue 0%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $30k
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.
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…
The organization receives, warehouses, and distributes salvageable food items to non-profit tax exempt member agencies to feed the ill, needy, and infants.
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.
Child day care center
Connecting families affected by childhood cancer by providing opportunities that encourage relationships and strengthen community.
Supports adults with disabilities to live and work as independently as possible in the community of their choice.
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.
To provide employment for the disabled.
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.
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.
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…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Junior Achievement of Eastern Iowa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Cedar Valley Trails Partnership. 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 21 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% 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 9% 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.
30 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. 30 of the 74 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 CEDAR VALLEY HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds IOWA HEARTLAND HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ↗
- Who funds NORTH STAR COMMUNITY SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds CEDAR FALLS SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST IOWA FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds CEDAR VALLEY IRISH CULTURAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds AMERICANS FOR INDEPENDENT LIVING ↗
- Who funds FAMILY & CHILDREN'S COUNCIL OF BLACK HAWK COUNTY ↗
- Who funds DIAMONDS AND FIELDS ↗
- Who funds Beaus Beautiful Blessings Inc ↗
- Who funds JOB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LORAS COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds CAMP COURAGEOUS OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds ALLEN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds HOUSE OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds WATERLOO COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RETRIEVING FREEDOM INC ↗
- Who funds ASPIRE TRP INC ↗
- Who funds WATERLOO COMMUNITY SCHOOLS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SERVICES IN IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds TRY PIE ↗
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: Max and Helen Guernsey Charitable Foundation · Lsb Foundation · Otto Schoitz Foundation · Black Hawk County Gaming Association · Cedar Valley United Way · The Braun Family Foundation · Pauline R Barrett Charitable Foundation · Charlotte and William Hinson Charitable Foundation Trust · The Gallagher Family Foundation · Dupaco RW Hoefer Foundation · Gordon Flesch Charitable Foundation Inc · Molinaro Family Charitable 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 Van G Miller Family Charitable 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.
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.
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