· Private foundation
Vermeer Charitable Foundation
Its FY2024 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
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k40 grants · $71k
- $10k–50k20 grants · $393k
- $50k–250k15 grants · $1.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FOOD BANK OF IOWA | $190,700 |
| TRINITY CHRISTIAN COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| CENTRAL COLLEGE | $100,000 |
| WESLEY RETIREMENT SERVICES | $100,000 |
| DORDT UNIVERSITY | $100,000 |
| SPIRIT OF PELLA | $100,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $92,550 |
| PELLA CHRISTIAN GRADE SCHOOL | $86,100 |
| PELLA CHRISTIAN HIGH SCHOOL | $85,850 |
| DES MOINES CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $76,700 |
| PELLA FOOD SHELF | $66,400 |
| PELLA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $52,500 |
| BLESSMAN INTERNATIONL | $50,000 |
| PELLA OPERA HOUSE | $50,000 |
| RESTORING EDEN TEACHING FARM | $50,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $520k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 61% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 +26% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
87 repeat relationships — 49 still active in FY2024, 38 since wound down; 25 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $312k 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
- TSTHE SOCIETY OF PELLA CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS6× · 2017–2024 · $683k · revenue +276%
- CCCENTRAL COLLEGE6× · 2017–2024 · $610k · revenue +7%
- DUDORDT UNIVERSITY5× · 2017–2024 · $562k · revenue +66%
Funded once
- COCITY OF PELLAone grant, 2022 · $750k
- CCCHANGE COURSEone grant, 2023 · $54k
- PKPELLA KIWANIS CLUBone grant, 2020 · $50k
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.
Provision of christ centered education with scholastic excellence.
Engages, equips and empowers learners to explore their vocations, fulfill their potential and serve the world.
Cornell college offers an innovative and rigorous learning community where faculty and staff collaborate with students to develop the intellectual curiosity, creativity and moral courage necessary for a lifetime of learning and engaged…
Evangel is a comprehensive christian university that is committed to excellence in educating and equipping students to become spirit empowered servants of god who will impact the church and society globally.
As a christian university, we provide education and research opportunities preparing global leaders to partner with local communities.
Christian institution of higher learning dedicated to the exploration, discernment, sustentation, and dissemination of god's truth. midwest is committed to excellence in education encouraging students to comprehensively consider god's word…
To offer high school students an academically excellent, christ-centered education. within a caring community, hillcrest academy prepares students for lives of christian discipleship, peacemaking and service.
The mission of pella regional health center is to provide healthcare and healing services with christian compassion.
The mission of crown college is to provide a biblically based education for christian leadership in the christian and missionary alliance, the church-at-large, and the world.
The mission of Taylor University is to develop servant-leaders marked with a passion to minister Christ's redemptive love, grace, and truth to a world in need.
Union college is a seventh-day adventist community of higher education, inspired by jesus christ, and dedicated to empowering students to learn, serve, and lead.
Mid-america christian university prepares students through a wesleyan perspective to create, collaborate, and innovate to solve local and global problems for the glory of god through jesus christ and the good of society.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Meals From the Heartland Inc and the most unlike its peers is Iowans for Ukrainians. 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 25 years old; the field is 38. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% 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.
117 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. 117 of the 244 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 PELLA CHRISTIAN GRADE SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE SOCIETY OF PELLA CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds CENTRAL COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds DORDT UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds TRINITY CHRISTIAN COLLEGE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHWESTERN COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds WESLEY RETIREMENT SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds LITTLE EAGLE ↗
- Who funds LAKE VIEW CAMP & CONFERENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds PELLA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PELLA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SPIRIT OF PELLA ↗
- Who funds THE WELL RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds WONDER SPELEN ↗
- Who funds INDIAN HILLS COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CROSSROADS OF PELLA ↗
- Who funds 818 FORWARD WITH FAITH INC ↗
- Who funds MAHASKA COUNTY YMCA ↗
- Who funds BLESSMAN INTERNATIONAL INC ↗
- Who funds DISCOVER HOPE 517 ↗
- Who funds MEALS FROM THE HEARTLAND INC ↗
- Who funds PLEASANTVILLE YOUTH INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds CROWN BROADCASTING ↗
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: Pella Rolscreen Foundation · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Weiler Foundation · Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · R & L Vermeer Foundation Inc · Boat Foundation Inc · Peter H and E Lucille Gaass Kuyper Foundation · Meredith Corporation Foundation · The West Bancorporation Foundation Inc · EMC Insurance Foundation · Variety - the Children's Charity of Iowa · Vanden Bosch 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 Vermeer 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.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology — 35% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- Food for the Poor Inc — 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 Vermeer Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Vermeer Charitable 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.