· Private foundation
Widen Family Foundation Inc
Its FY2024 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 FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k19 grants · $85k
- $10k–50k26 grants · $428k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| RIVER FOOD PANTRY INC | $30,000 |
| GIGI'S PLAYHOUSE MADISON | $30,000 |
| LOGAN'S HEART AND SMILES | $30,000 |
| EAST MADISON COMMUNITY CENTER INC | $25,000 |
| WAYFORWARD RESOURCES | $25,000 |
| SPECIALTY CARE FREE CLINIC | $25,000 |
| YADA PROJECT | $25,000 |
| BADGER PRAIRIE NEEDS NETWORK INC | $25,000 |
| BLACK MAN COALITION FOUNDATION | $20,000 |
| SUNSHINE PLACE INC | $20,000 |
| REAP FOOD GROUP INC | $15,000 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK | $15,000 |
| LOV INC | $12,000 |
| CORNERSTONES OF GRACE INC | $10,800 |
| SOL RELIEF INC | $10,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $514k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 95% 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.
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 +16% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
28 repeat relationships — 24 still active in FY2024, 4 since wound down; 20 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 53% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $238k 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
- WRWAYFORWARD RESOURCES INC3× · 2022–2024 · $125k · revenue +118%
- TRTHE ROAD HOME DANE COUNTY INC2× · 2023–2024 · $90k · revenue +5%
- SCSPECIALTY CARE FREE CLINIC INC3× · 2022–2024 · $67k · revenue +112%
Funded once
- CHCENTRO HISPANO INCone grant, 2022 · $100k · revenue -32%
- ULURBAN LEAGUE OF GREATER MADISON INCone grant, 2022 · $70k · revenue -43%
- MUMADISON-AREA URBAN MINISTRY INC (DBA JUST DANE)one grant, 2022 · $70k
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.
Dane county parent council changes the lives of underserved children and families through education and supportive services.
Midwest dairy works with others to give consumers an excellent dairy experience increasing sales, fostering innovation, and inspiring consumer confidence of dairy products and practices.
Pathways of wisconsin provides supported employment opportunities and empowerment through quality, person-centered programming for individuals of all abilities.
Goodwill of south central wisconsin's mission is to help people in our community to live, work and thrive through housing, employment and supportive services. see schedule o for continuationsupported employment and job skills training are…
Legal protection and advocacy to protect the rights of people with disabilities in wisconsin.
We're a network of community food centers that specializes in food, love, and community. Hunger is a real problem, and access to food should be a fundamental right. No one should be made to feel they're not deserving of nourishment when…
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
Madison community cooperative's mission is to improve the madison community by providing low-cost, not-for-profit cooperative housing for very low to moderate income people and to be inclusive of underrepresented and marginalized groups.
Unite the community to achieve measurable results that change lives.
Madison development corporation (mdc)'s mission is to help create jobs by providing gap financing to small businesses and to develop and finance quality, affordable workforce housing units in madison and the dane county area.
Renew wisconsin leads and accelerates the transformation to wisconsin's renewable energy future through advocacy, education, and collaboration.
We envision collaborations rooted in food, land and learning so that people can grow and thrive in healthy, equitable and sustainable neighborhoods.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Irwin a and Robert D Goodman Community Center Inc and the most unlike its peers is Sol Relief. 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 24 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 6% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
63 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. 63 of the 82 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 WAYFORWARD RESOURCES INC ↗
- Who funds CENTRO HISPANO INC ↗
- Who funds THE ROAD HOME DANE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds URBAN LEAGUE OF GREATER MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds SPECIALTY CARE FREE CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds THE ALY WOLFF FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOODBANK OF SOUTHERN WI ↗
- Who funds OPERATION FRESH START INC ↗
- Who funds MAYDM INC ↗
- Who funds YWCA MADISON INC ↗
- Who funds SUNSHINE PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds THE RIVER FOOD PANTRY INC ↗
- Who funds MUSICALLY FED ↗
- Who funds IRWIN A AND ROBERT D GOODMAN COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds TIME ON THE WATER ↗
- Who funds FORT LITTLEGREEN GARDENS INC ↗
- Who funds BADGER PRAIRIE NEEDS NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds EAST MADISON COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds LIVING OUR VISIONS INC dba LOV Inc ↗
- Who funds MADISON READING PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds BREAST CANCER RECOVERY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds BLACK GIRL MAGIC EDUCATIONAL SERVICES IN ↗
- Who funds BLACK MEN COALITION FOUNDATION CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN YOUTH COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds BIKES FOR KIDS WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SUPPORT NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds REAP FOOD GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds MONONA GROVE EDUCATION FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DOGSINVESTS INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF DANE COUNTY 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: Madison Gas and Electric Foundation Inc · Madison Community Foundation · The Evjue Foundation Inc · United Way of Dane County Inc · Alliant Energy Foundation Inc · Endres Manufacturing Foundation Inc · Trustage Foundation Inc · The Roots and Wings Foundation Inc · Green Bay Packers Foundation · Sub-Zero Group Foundation Inc · Veridian Foundation Inc · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc
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 Widen Family 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Widen Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Widen Family Foundation Inc 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.