· Private foundation
Vern & Bunny Thelen Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k15 grants · $23k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $23k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE EASTERN WI | $22,500 |
| SHARING CENTER | $2,200 |
| ST FRANCIS DE SALES | $1,500 |
| PM&L THEATRE | $1,500 |
| ST PETERS ST VINCENT DEPAUL | $1,500 |
| LOAVES & FISHES | $1,500 |
| HELPING HANDS | $1,500 |
| FISH OF MCHENRY | $1,500 |
| WARREN TOWNSHIP FOOD PANTRY | $1,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,500 |
| THE CHAPPEL COMMUNITY CARE CENTER | $1,500 |
| OPEN ARMS MISSION | $1,500 |
| COMMUNITY FOOD PANTRY | $1,500 |
| ST VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY | $1,500 |
| ANTIOCH AREA HEALTHCARE ACCESSIBILITY | $1,500 |
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 (FY17–25, $84k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 0% 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.
20 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 6 since wound down; 2 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, 47% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $24k 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
American Brain Tumor Association2× · 2019–2020 · $42k · revenue +21%- SCSHARING CENTER INC9× · 2017–2025 · $32k · revenue +551%
- CFCOMMUNITY FOOD PANTRY9× · 2017–2025 · $26k · revenue +18%
Funded once
- UPUS PAIN FOUNDATION INCgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $25k · revenue +55%
- AAALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION GREATER ILone grant, 2021 · $5k
- SVST VINCENT DE PAULone grant, 2017 · $3k
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.
We provide food, household and personal items as available to combat food scarcity and poverty in our community.
Free food pantry. The Organization distributes free food to over 100 needy families per week, totaling almost 5000 visits per year. Over 70 individual volunteers receive, organize, and distribute over 200,000 pounds of food annually.
The Foodbank's mission is to provide food, and develop awareness of and creative solutions for food insecurity. Annually, the Foodbank distributes approximately 9.5 million pounds of food to 130 food pantries, soup kitchens, children's…
Distribute food to needy families and individuals.
Providing food to needy families in the illinois valley area.
The Christian mission of the Geneseo-Atkinson food Pantry is to provide food, clothing, and short-term emergency assistance for families and individuals residing in Geneseo (61254) or Atkinson (61235) zip code areas.
Providing food for people in need.
Our mission at the Sauk Valley Foodbank is to help alleviate food insecurity in the Sauk Valley area.
Food and nonfood assistance to individuals
Distribution of food to the needy residents in the City of Watertown and surrounding rural communities falling into the Watertown School District. Patrons may come every 30 days.
Provide food and other assistance to families and individuals in the western suburbs of chicago.
The lockport fish food pantry is a non-profit organization, operated solely by volunteers. the pantry helps supplement food and essentials for individuals and families in need in lockport and homer townships in will county, illinois.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Fish of Mchenry and the most unlike its peers is Community Food Pantry. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 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 American Brain Tumor Association ↗
- Who funds SHARING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds TWIN LAKES AREA FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds FISH OF MCHENRY ↗
- Who funds US PAIN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL ROCKFORD COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds ANTIOCH AREA HEALTHCARE ACCESSIBILITY ALLIANCE 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: The Blackbaud Giving Fund · 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 Vern & Bunny Thelen Family 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Vern & Bunny Thelen Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Vern & Bunny Thelen Family 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.