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Vernon F Dale Charitable Trust at a glance

· Private foundation

Vernon F Dale Charitable Trust

Its FY2026 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.

$1.4M
Granted FY2026still arriving
30
Grants FY2026still arriving
9
States reached
$218k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
01What it funds
0197% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2020 to 2025.

Health$4.7MHuman Services$1.3MReligion$894kEducation$750kYouth Development$330kPublic Safety & Disaster$41kOther$0
02FY2026 · 30 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2026

  • Under $10k8 grants · $60k
  • $10k–50k15 grants · $290k
  • $50k–250k7 grants · $1.1M
$14,482
Median grant
9
States reached
$23M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
MAYO CLINIC$218,403
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE$217,266
MAYO CLINIC HEALTH SYSTEM$216,113
SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN$144,839
GUNDERSEN MEDICAL FOUNDATION$144,839
AQUINAS CATHOLIC SCHOOLS$72,427
NATIONAL JEWISH MEDICAL & RESEARCH$72,427
FATHER FLANAGANS BOYS HOME$43,447
ONALASKA HIGH SCHOOL$28,965
HOLMEN HIGH SCHOOL$28,965
Individual grant recipient$28,965
HOLMEN LUTHERAN CHURCH$14,482
THE CHURCH OF SAINT MARY TREMPEALEAU$14,482
ZION LUTHERAN CHURCH$14,482
ST PATRICK'S CHURCH$14,482
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Its human-services grants (FY21–26, $1.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 11%CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE: $217k → 12%CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE: $212k → 12%CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE: $211k → 12%CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE: $208k → 12%CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE: $208k → 12%CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE: $200k → 12%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.

Which US states its grants reach

MN
IL
WI
OH
CA
CO
NE
OK
TX
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

93%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$7.9M · 31 repeat orgs$600k to everyone else

31 repeat relationships: 29 still active in FY2026, 2 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

31
2

Total granted

$7.9M
$600k

Still filing today

19%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2026, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
RenewedFirst-time

Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant

’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
HealthHuman ServicesYouth DevelopmentOther
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • GL
    Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation Inc
    7× · 2020–2026 · $971k · revenue +39%
  • SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN
    7× · 2020–2026 · $971k · revenue +106%
  • BA
    BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER LA CROSS
    7× · 2020–2026 · $97k · revenue +119%

Funded once

  • MC
    MAYO CLINIC
    one grant, 2020 · $400k
  • AC
    ATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE
    one grant, 2020 · $200k
How this is measured

Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

04Its field
04the grantee network

7 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.

Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

How this is measured

Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2017 to 2026, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 7 of the 34 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
0
Early backer (in before they grew)
7/7
Grantees still filing
5/7
Grew since first funded

Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

MAYO CLINIC HEALTH SYSTEM: $1,334,348 · OtherMAYO CLINIC HEALTH SYSTEMNATIONAL JEWISH MEDICAL & RESEARCH: $485,334 · OtherNATIONAL JEWISH MEDICAL & RESEARCHAQUINAS CATHOLIC SCHOOLS INC: $485,334 · OtherAQUINAS CATHOLIC SCHOOLS INCMAYO CLINIC: $400,068 · OtherMAYO CLINICFATHER FLANAGANS BOYS HOME: $291,169 · OtherFATHER FLANAGANS BOYS HOMEONALASKA HIGH SCHOOL: $201,010 · OtherATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE: $200,034 · OtherHOLMEN HIGH SCHOOL: $194,112 · OtherIndividual grant recipient: $194,112 · Other+18 more: $1,297,079 · Other+18 moreMAYO CLINIC: $1,177,426 · HealthMAYO CLINICGundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation Inc: $970,614 · HealthGundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation…SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN: $970,614 · HealthSHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN+2 more: $93,538 · HealthCatholic Charities of the Diocese: $1,255,914 · Human ServicesCatholic Chari…BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER LA CROSS: $97,056 · Youth Development
Other$5,082,600Health$3,212,192Human Services$1,255,914Youth Development$97,056

Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

25%50%75%100%$10M$100Mgrantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budgetCatholic Charities of the Diocese: $1,255,914 over 6y, 3.0% of budgetMAYO CLINIC: $1,177,426 over 6y, 0.0% of budgetGundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation Inc: $970,614 over 7y, 0.6% of budgetSHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN: $970,614 over 7y, 0.0% of budgetBOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER LA CROSS: $97,056 over 7y, 0.4% of budgetAmerican Heart Association Inc: $46,782 over 7y, 0.0% of budgetMUSCULAR DYSTROPHY ASSOCIATION INC: $46,756 over 7y, 0.0% of budget
Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

  • Who funds Catholic Charities of the Diocese ↗
  • Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
  • Who funds Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation Inc ↗
  • Who funds SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN ↗
  • Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER LA CROSS ↗
  • Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
  • Who funds MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY ASSOCIATION INC ↗

Co-funders

Grantmakers whose grantees overlap with this funder’s far more than size alone predicts. Closer means stronger alignment; arcs show where they also fund each other. Here they form a tightly interlocked group: most of these funders back each other's grantees too.

La Crosse Community F…Donor Advised Charita…Fidelity Investments …Amazonsmile Foundation
La Crosse Community FoundationWI13.6× affinity4 shared granteesties to 3 of 3Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →

Open a dossier: La Crosse Community Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile Foundation

How this is measured
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. Overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.

How much its grantees rely on government

Each dot is one organization Vernon F Dale Charitable Trust funds: left to right is the share of its income from government, bottom to top the share from Vernon F Dale Charitable Trust. Bigger dots raise more.

2024
’20’21’22’23’24’25
no gov · 00%0%1%3%5%funder's share of their income ↑0%5%10%15%20%share of the org’s income from government →median 0%
  • Shriners Hospitals for Children: 0% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
2report government grants on their 990 we could not trace to a source (not plotted)
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–20%
typical government reliance, FY20–25
How this is measured
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 a grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first, a floor rather than 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 to 24 months.

On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 34 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

How this is measured
Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2026, released 2026. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

Source object · view filing

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More from the funding graph

The unnamed billions
grants reported with no recipient in the public record
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
The endowment market
who holds foundation money, and what just moved
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home