· Public charity
Wisconsin Voices Inc
Wisconsin voices provides technical assistance and resources to build capacity and leadership to 501(c)(3) organizations in support of commonly held values of equal opportunity, freedom, progress, and a government that works for all.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $13k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $149k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $126k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| SHARE THE LOVE INC | $72,000 |
| METCALFE PARK COMMUNITY BRIDGES | $54,000 |
| SHERMAN PARK COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION | $45,000 |
| VIA CDC | $36,000 |
| VOCES DE LA FRONTERA | $35,000 |
| UNITING GARDEN HOMES INCORPORATION | $23,000 |
| CITIZEN ACTION OF WISCONSIN EDUCATION FUND INC | $10,000 |
| MKE BLACK INC | $6,500 |
| MILWAUKEE TURNERS | $6,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 87% 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 12% of Wisconsin Voices Inc’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, 92% of the giving stays in WI; read by stated purpose it is 81% — 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +182% since the first grant, against 0% for the ones you funded once.
21 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2024, 14 since wound down; 2 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $30k 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
- WIWISDOM INC3× · 2018–2020 · $487k · revenue +182%
VOCES DE LA FRONTERA INC6× · 2018–2024 · $445k · revenue +381%
METCALFE PARK COMMUNITY BRIDGES INC5× · 2019–2024 · $276k · revenue +390% · 48% of their budget
Funded once
- CACITIZEN ACTION OF WISCONSIN INCone grant, 2020 · $163k · revenue -37%
- PEPUBLIC EDUCATION NETWORKone grant, 2020 · $125k
- LOLEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF WISCONSIN ADVOCACY NETWORK INCone grant, 2020 · $123k
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.
Wisconsin progress recruits, trains, elects, and develops progressive candidates and leaders at the local and state legislative levels.
Wisconsin progress institute exists to empower wisconsin's locally elected leaders with the tools, training, and support they need to be effective, values-driven public servants.
We conduct impartial public policy research and analysis to drive informed debate and effective decision-making in the state of wisconsin.
Milwaukee women inc is an organization of executives determined to change the quality and composition of corporate boards to maximize the performance of public and private companies with a focus on women and women of color.
Bring about the sustained regeneration, improvement, and management of the physical environment by developing community-based partnerships that empower people, businesses, and organizations to promote environmental, economic, and social…
The league of women voters is a nonpartisan organization that empowers voters and defends democracy by supporting and educating voters and promoting active civic engagement.
Freedom action now, inc. (fan) is a radical queer black and southeast asian feminist organization creating change for the most impacted communities in wisconsin through voter education, leadership development, community organizing, and…
The league of women voters of wisconsin (lwvwi) is a nonpartisan political organization. we encourage informed, active participation in government and work to increase understanding of major public policy issues. we influence public policy…
Wisconsin principles (wp) is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization dedicated to preserving conservative values in the state of wisconsin. committed to fiscal conservatism, educational choice, and individual liberty, we strive to empower…
To advocate for progressive change in the wisconsin justice system by educating the public about its real-life impacts and partnering with other organizations to achieve more just outcomes.
We are organized to support public policy that protects public education, the environment, the rights of all citizens and expands economic opportunity and fairness for everyone.
Together wisconsin acts, inc. (twa) advocates for legislation, regulations and government programs to maintain and improve the common good, quality of life, and social welfare of the people in the state of wisconsin. twa activities include…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Wisconsin Conservation Voices Inc and the most unlike its peers is Innovative Educational Solutions Institute 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 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% 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.
45 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. 45 of the 54 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 WISDOM INC ↗
- Who funds VOCES DE LA FRONTERA INC ↗
- Who funds METCALFE PARK COMMUNITY BRIDGES INC ↗
- Who funds Southside Organizing Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds GOODPOWER EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds 9TO5 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WORKING WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds CITIZEN ACTION OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds FREEDOM INC ↗
- Who funds WAVE EDUCATIONAL FUND INC ↗
- Who funds LAYTON BOULEVARD WEST NEIGHBORS INC DBA VIA CDC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN CONSERVATION VOICES INC ↗
- Who funds LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF WISCONSIN ADVOCACY NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds TIDES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Hmong American Womens Association Inc ↗
- Who funds LEADERS IGNITING TRANSFORMATION ACTION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds COMMON GROUND INC ↗
- Who funds SHERMAN PARK COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE TURNERS INC ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE FOR YOUTH ORGANIZING ↗
- Who funds FATHERS MAKING PROGRESS INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN VOICES INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN ALLIANCE FOR EXCELLENT SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds CITIZEN ACTION OF WISCONSIN EDUCATION FUND INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE BLOCK INC ↗
- Who funds WISCONSIN FARMERS UNION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EXPO of Wisconsin Inc ↗
- Who funds PASTORS UNITED COMMUNITY ADVOCACY INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE HEALTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds MILWAUKEE LGBT COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF WISCONSIN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds DOMINICAN CENTER FOR WOMEN INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST ASIAN EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF WISCONSIN INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY INC ↗
- Who funds TAKEACTION MN EDUCATION FUND ↗
- Who funds Innovative Educational Solutions Institute 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: Greater Milwaukee Foundation Inc · State Voices · State Power Fund · Tides Foundation · Herbert H Kohl Charities Inc · United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County Inc · New Venture Fund · All Hands on Deck Network Inc · Windward Fund · Amalgamated Charitable Foundation Inc · NEO Philanthropy Inc · Joseph and Vera Zilber Family 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 Wisconsin Voices 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 Voices Inc?
Find your warmest path to Wisconsin Voices 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.