· Public charity
Wisconsin VFW Foundation Inc
To facilitate the charitable, patriotic and educational activities of the membership of the veterans of foreign wars-department of wisconsin.
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.
The 10 grants below total $207,641 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $263,423 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $55,782 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k2 grants · $17k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $141k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE US DEPT OF WISCONSIN 2260 | $50,000 |
| WM SONNY SIMON VFW POST 8216 | $35,000 |
| VFW POST 1318 | $34,757 |
| VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES DEPT OF WISCONSIN | $25,000 |
| MT HOREB VFW POST 9511 | $16,000 |
| WISCONSIN VETERANS NETWORK INC | $10,000 |
| VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES DEPT OF WISCONSIN | $10,000 |
| VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE US DEPT OF WISCONSIN | $10,000 |
| DEPARTMENT OF WISCONSIN OF THE VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE US | $9,884 |
| VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES DEPT OF WISCONSIN | $7,000 |
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 (FY23–24, $31k) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 9%. 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.
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 +19% since the first grant, against -11% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 5 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, 51% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $102k 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
- VOveterans of foreign wars of the 1318 marion c6× · 2019–2025 · $176k · revenue +159% · 58% of their budget
- DODEPARTMENT OF WISCONSIN OF THE VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES4× · 2019–2025 · $148k · revenue +19%
- VOVETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES DEPT OF WISCONSIN5× · 2020–2025 · $75k · revenue +125% · 42% of their budget
Funded once
- VOVETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES DEPT OF WISCONSINone grant, 2021 · $125k
- VOVETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES DEPT OF WISCONSINone grant, 2023 · $80k
- VOVETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS-POST 10818one grant, 2023 · $51k · revenue -91%
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.
Veterans affairs
The vfw has been supporting and honoring the military veterans and their families since 1914.
To support Veterans of Foreign Wats per national charter
Service officers for filing and managing va claims. to assist the posts in providing services to members and their families for veterans of foreign wars.
Support of veterans
To support all veterans and the community
Veteran organization dedicated to servering local community needs and veterans needs through volunteer grants donations and scholarships
To provide a meeting place for veterans
Provide aid to veterans.
Assist disabled and needy veterans.
Veterans of all our armed services a place to congregate
To foster camaraderie among United States veterans of overseas conflicts. To serve our veterans, the military, and our communities. To advocate on behalf of all veterans. The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is a nonprofit…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Department of Wisconsin of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and the most unlike its peers is Walkin in My Shoes 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 53 years old; the field is 20. 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 9% 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.
16 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. 16 of the 27 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 VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds veterans of foreign wars of the 1318 marion c ↗
- Who funds DEPARTMENT OF WISCONSIN OF THE VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES ↗
- Who funds VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES DEPT OF WISCONSIN ↗
- Who funds VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS-POST 10818 ↗
- Who funds Veterans of Foreign Wars 2260 ↗
- Who funds MT HOREB VFW POST 9511 ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS POST 328 ↗
- Who funds VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS POST 6375 ↗
- Who funds SIERRA DELTA INC ↗
- Who funds Center for Veterans Issues Inc ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN VETERANS NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds STABLE HANDS INC ↗
- Who funds TRINITY EQUESTRIAN CENTER KIDS KAMP INC ↗
- Who funds WALKIN IN MY SHOES 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 set of overlaps that mostly run through you, not between each other.
Open a dossier: Amazonsmile 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 Wisconsin VFW 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 Wisconsin VFW Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Wisconsin VFW 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.