· Private foundation
Walden Charitable 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k13 grants · $47k
- $10k–50k10 grants · $136k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RIVER'S EDGE METHODIST CHURCH | $30,000 |
| SPENCER REGIONAL HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| ATLAS OF LAKES AREA | $13,000 |
| ATLAS OF SPENCER | $13,000 |
| CRESTON AREA FOOD PANTRY | $12,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $12,000 |
| CRESTON AREA FOOD SHELF DBA CRESTON FOOD PANTRY INC | $10,500 |
| DICKINSON COUNTY HUNGER COALITION | $10,000 |
| TRI COUNTY FOOD PANTRY | $10,000 |
| LOVE TAKES ROOT | $10,000 |
| MORNINGSIDE UNIVERSITY | $7,500 |
| THE OUTREACH | $5,000 |
| CROSSWINDS CHURCH-EFCA | $5,000 |
| ORIENT UMC MOBILE FOOD PANTRY | $5,000 |
| FAMILY CRISIS CENTERS INC | $5,000 |
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 (FY20–25, $92k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 20% of Walden Charitable Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 98% of the giving stays in IA; read by stated purpose it is 82% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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.
24 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 3 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, 94% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $12k 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
- SRSpencer Regional Healthcare Foundation4× · 2022–2025 · $50k · revenue +80%
- AOATLAS OF SPENCER5× · 2020–2025 · $37k · revenue +44%
- CACRESTON AREA FOOD PANTRY INC5× · 2019–2025 · $34k · revenue +127%
Funded once
- BCBattle Creek Historical Foundationone grant, 2019 · $20k
- SCSPENCER CHAMBER FOUNDATION FLOOD RECOVERY FUNDone grant, 2024 · $15k
- SMSIGOURNEY MINISTERIAL ALLIANCECHAPone grant, 2020 · $6k
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 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.
Mica helps families experencing poverty meet their needs, build on their strengths, and achieve their goals.
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…
To provide shelter and services to families experiencing homelessness
To provide high-quality and compassionate care to community members approaching the end of life.
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…
Community health care provides the communities we serve with excellence in patient-centered medical, dental, and behavioral health care that is compassionate, affordable, and accessible.
Dedicated to providing access to affordable, compassionate, high quality health care for all.
Connecting families affected by childhood cancer by providing opportunities that encourage relationships and strengthen community.
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.
To provide primary health care to residents of the greater se iowa region, especially those individuals/families with limited resources or with other barriers to health care. see schedule o for additional information.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/a Greater Des Moines Community Fdn and the most unlike its peers is Creston Area Food Pantry Inc. 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 31 years old; the field is 55. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 11% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 15% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
26 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. 26 of the 78 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 Spencer Regional Healthcare Foundation ↗
- Who funds ATLAS OF SPENCER ↗
- Who funds CRESTON AREA FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds LOVE TAKES ROOT INC ↗
- Who funds MORNINGSIDE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds FAMILY CRISIS CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds CLAY COUNTY HERITAGE ↗
- Who funds OUTREACH INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FDN OF GREATER DES MOINES F/K/A GREATER DES MOINES COMMUNITY FDN ↗
- Who funds IMPACT COMMUNITY ACTION PARTNERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds MIDLANDS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
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: Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Pella Rolscreen Foundation · Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation · Meredith Corporation Foundation · First Interstate BancSystem Foundation Inc · Interstates Foundation · Variety - the Children's Charity of Iowa · Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Dwight and Marilyn Conover Foundation · The Chesterman Family Foundation · The Merchants Bonding Company 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 Walden 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.