· Private foundation
West Family Foundation
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 FY2018–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k28 grants · $55k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $40k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ST THOMAS MORE CATHOLIC CHURCH | $10,000 |
| SAVE THE MUSIC FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CENTER FOR ADVANCEMENT | $10,000 |
| THE IOWA CHILDRENS MUSEUM | $10,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,788 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CENTER FOR ADVANCEMENT | $5,000 |
| CITY OF CORALVILLE | $4,000 |
| BOSTON YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $4,000 |
| ORCHESTRA IOWA | $3,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CENTER FOR ADVANCEMENT | $3,000 |
| NAMM FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| CHILDSERVE FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN IOWA | $2,500 |
| WATERLOO-CEDAR FALLS SYMPHONY | $2,500 |
| QUAD CITY SYMPHONY | $2,500 |
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 (FY18–25, $28k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 11% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 8% of West Family 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.
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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +17% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 16 still active in FY2025, 14 since wound down; 11 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, 62% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $35k 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
- SUSTATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION7× · 2019–2025 · $98k · revenue +21%
- OIORCHESTRA IOWA INC8× · 2018–2025 · $54k · revenue +12%
- TFTHE FOUNDATION FOR THE IOWA CITY COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT7× · 2018–2025 · $21k · revenue +56%
Funded once
- WMWEST MUSIC COMPANY INCone grant, 2023 · $10k
- TETHE ENGLERT THEATERone grant, 2018 · $8k
- TUTHE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA SCHOOL OF MUSICone grant, 2020 · $5k
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 cleveland institute of music's mission is to empower the world's most talented classical music students to fulfill their dreams and potential.
The Northeast Iowa School of Music (NISOM) is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in the greater Tri-State area community by meeting the music education and enrichment needs of people of all ages and…
The indianapolis chamber orchestra advances and promotes music composed for the small orchestra through professional performances and education programs.
The music institute of chicago ("music institute") leads people toward a lifelong engagement with music, by providing widely accessible resources for high quality music teaching, performing, and service activities.
The minnesota orchestra mission is to enrich, inspire and serve our community as an enduring symphony orchestra internationally recognized for its artistic excellence.
The international violin competition of indianapolis (ivci) recognizes, rewards and promotes the world's finest young classical violinists and encourages understanding, appreciation and support of the violin repertoire by a large and…
To be north carolina's state orchestra, an orchestra achieving the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards, and embracing its dual legacies of statewide service and music education.
The mission of cma is to engage, enrich and educate the central iowa community through provocative, world-class musical performances by legends and rising stars. cma is governed by a volunteer board of directors and has an annual operating…
The des moines symphony is a not-for-profit, professional orchestra formed in 1937 to enrich, educate, and inspire the community by performing great orchestral music. the symphony association, governed by a volunteer board of trustees and…
The mission of the Fresno Philharmonic is to enrich the lives of Central San Joaquin Valley residents through inspiring performances of orchestral music. We are an essential and collaborative member of a vibrant arts scene which unites,…
We bring people, communities, and cultures together through performance, the creation of new choral works, outreach, and education in indianapolis and beyond.
Strengthen communities by providing high-quality and innovative artistic experiences that entertain, inspire, and unite diverse audiences.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Orchestra Iowa Inc and the most unlike its peers is Decolonizing the Music Room. 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 39 years old; the field is 38. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 13% 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 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.
24 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. 24 of the 84 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 STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ORCHESTRA IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds SAVE THE MUSIC FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds RIVERSIDE THEATRE CO ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR THE IOWA CITY COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT ↗
- Who funds NAMM Foundation A Not-For-Profit Corporation ↗
- Who funds IOWA ALLIANCE FOR ARTS EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds QUAD CITY SYMPHONY TRUST ↗
- Who funds THE IOWA CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds CHILDSERVE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PREUCIL SCHOOL OF MUSIC ↗
- Who funds BOSTON YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRAS INC ↗
- Who funds WARTBURG COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE ENGLERT CIVIC THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds SUMMER OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds ARTS AND SERVICES FOR DISABLED INC DBA ABLE ARTS WORK ↗
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 Foundation of Johnson County · GreenState Credit Union · The Kenneth K Kinsey Family Foundation · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Gary Wicklund Family Foundation · Dne Caplan Family Foundation · Hills Bank Donor Advised Gift Fund · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Charities Aid Foundation America · Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program
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 West 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.
- Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras Inc — 1% 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.