· Private foundation
Wilson Family 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
- $250k+1 grant · $1.0M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FOX RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH | $1,037,968 |
| MILWAUKEE WORLD FESTIVAL | $20,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 22% of your 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.
13 repeat relationships — 2 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
SHARON LYNNE WILSON CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC4× · 2020–2024 · $211k · revenue +49%
FLORENTINE OPERA COMPANY INC4× · 2020–2024 · $85k · revenue +44%
MILWAUKEE BALLET COMPANY INC4× · 2020–2024 · $60k · revenue +19%
Funded once
WISCONSIN CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC INCone grant, 2024 · $25k · revenue 0%- JMJACK MILLER CENTERone grant, 2024 · $20k
- PAPOTAWATOMI AREA COUNCILone grant, 2023 · $15k
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.
Making the arts accessible to all
Strengthen communities by providing high-quality and innovative artistic experiences that entertain, inspire, and unite diverse audiences.
The mission of madison opera is to produce operas of the highest artistic standards.
The museum of wisconsin art celebrates the value, diversity, and uniqueness of the visual arts and artists of wisconsin. this is achieved by collecting, conserving, documenting, exhibiting, and promoting aesthetic understanding of the…
To bring the full spectrum of music theatre works to a wide and diverse audience
To provide the finest collaborative environment for: supporting performing arts training and education for a diverse population of youth; nurturing youth from diverse ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, instilling life-skills…
One of milwaukee's oldest arts organizations...
Presenting free high-quality classical music performances and music education experiences in the Chicago metropolitan area for people of all ages and degrees of musical awareness so they can experience how music enriches life.
Support the south milwaukee performing arts center and community arts
To reach a new generation of radio listeners on air, online and in the community with a compelling selection of music and public affairs programming. the corporation celebrates milwaukee music, arts, heritage, and culture by supporting and…
The minnesota orchestra mission is to enrich, inspire and serve our community as an enduring symphony orchestra internationally recognized for its artistic excellence.
Enriching the quality of life in the community by creating professional opera and music theater, which uniquely combine the visual and performing arts to express humanity's deepest emotions and highest aspirations.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is First Stage Milwaukee and the most unlike its peers is Hillsdale College. 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 56 years old; the field is 22. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% 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.
27 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. 27 of the 39 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 SHARON LYNNE WILSON CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds FLORENTINE OPERA COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds HILLSDALE COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE BALLET COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds ACADEMY OF BASIC EDUCATION INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE WORLD FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds Friends of Florence ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE FILM INC ↗
- Who funds ACTS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED PERFORMING ARTS FUND INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE REPERTORY THEATER INC ↗
- Who funds Young America's Foundation ↗
- Who funds WAUKESHA COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CITY FORWARD COLLECTIVE INC ↗
- Who funds FRANKLY MUSIC INC ↗
- Who funds JASPER NEWTON FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds The Wisconsin Philharmonic Inc ↗
- Who funds PATHWAYS HIGH INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST STAGE MILWAUKEE ↗
- Who funds ADOPTION SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds ELM GROVE WOMAN'S CLUB ↗
- Who funds LIFE NAVIGATORS INC ↗
- Who funds Optimist Theatre ↗
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: Green Bay Packers Foundation · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · Bert L and Patricia S Steigleder Charitable · Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · National Center for Housing Management Inc · Gardner Foundation · Baird Foundation Inc · Evan & Marion Helfaer Foundation · Bradley Impact Fund Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · Ralph Evinrude Foundation Inc · The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation 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 Wilson 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.