· Private foundation
Wagner-Essman Care Foundation Inc
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
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 $10k2 grants · $6k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $113k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| KELCH AVIATION MUSEUM | $50,000 |
| CATHOLIC CENTRAL HS OF BURLINGTON | $25,000 |
| FRIENDS OF CATHOLIC CENTRAL | $23,300 |
| ST MARY'S PARISH | $20,000 |
| LOVE ONE ANOTHER CAMPAIGN | $20,000 |
| ST JOSEPH'S PARISH | $15,000 |
| KATHY'S HOUSE | $10,000 |
| YERKES FUTURE FOUNDATION INC | $5,000 |
| SENO K RLT CONSERVANCY | $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 (FY17–24, $16k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 38% 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 +47% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
50 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 43 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $21k 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
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF MILWAUKEE CTY3× · 2020–2022 · $43k · revenue +47%- GLGENEVA LAKE CONSERVANCY INC7× · 2018–2024 · $31k · revenue +146%
- MCMELS CHARITIES INC8× · 2017–2024 · $27k · revenue +187%
Funded once
- CLCAT LAKE SUPERIOR SQUADROone grant, 2024 · $125k
- SJST JUDE SCHOOLone grant, 2024 · $20k
- BCBURLINGTON COMMUNITY FUND LTDone grant, 2018 · $10k · revenue +22%
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.
The mission of the wisconsin association of lakes is to conserve, enhance, and restore wisconsin's 15,000 lakes to ensure their sustainability for the benefit and collective use and enjoyment for this and future generations.
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
Protecting, enhancing and conserving open spaces encompassing meadows, woodlands, wetlands, and waterways in the town of wilton ct.
The purpose of the association shall be to restore and conserve wisconsin's waterfowl and wetland resources; to educate state waterfowlers during their progression from natural resource consumer to steward; and to promote governmental…
Gathering waters (wisconsin's alliance for land trusts) strengthens land trusts to protect wisconsin's special places and grow healthy, vibrant communities. the stronger the alliance between gathering waters' staff and board members, land…
The door county land trust is a local, non-governmental non-profit organization whose mission is to preserve door county's exceptional lands and waters forever.
Landmark conservancy is a nationally accredited, nonprofit conservation organization serving 20 counties across northwest wisconsin. their mission is to conserve wisconsin's natural legacy for everyone...forever.
Wisconsin community services advocates for justice and community safety, providing innovative opportunities for individuals to overcome adversity.
The wisconsin wildlife federation has a dual mission to engage in conservation education and to advocate for sound conservation policy.
To preserve, promote, protect, and enhance wisconsin state parks, forests, trails, and recreation areas.
The mission of the west wisconsin land trust, inc. is to preserve western wisconsin's natural character by informing, facilitating, and partnering with private landowners, communities, and local governments to protect valuable land.
Obtain and manage land of ecological significance.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Feast of Crispian. 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 34 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 70 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 ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF MILWAUKEE CTY ↗
- Who funds Kathy's House Inc ↗
- Who funds GENEVA LAKE CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds MELS CHARITIES INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIAL OLYMPICS WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds KINSHIP MKE INC ↗
- Who funds CARMELITE SISTERSHOME FOR GIRLS ↗
- Who funds LIFE'S CONNECTION INC ↗
- Who funds BURLINGTON COMMUNITY FUND LTD ↗
- Who funds BURLINGTON COMMUNITY POOL CORP ↗
- Who funds THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BURLINGTON TRANSITIONAL LIVING ↗
- Who funds YERKES FUTURE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL CRANE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SOJOURNER FAMILY PEACE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds RACINE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SYSTEM INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF WISCONSIN 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: Baird Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · The Wagner Foundation Ltd · Oneill Foundation Inc · Archdiocese of Milwaukee Catholic Community Foundation Inc · Evan & Marion Helfaer Foundation · Community Foundation of Southern Wisconsin Inc · Kunes Family Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · Edward Jones Foundation · Ge Aerospace 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 Wagner-Essman Care Foundation Inc 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.