· Private foundation
Wittern Family Charitable 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k9 grants · $27k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MAYO CLINIC | $50,000 |
| INTEGRATED COMMUNITY | $5,000 |
| NORTHWEST ROCKY MOUNTAIN CASA | $5,000 |
| BREANNA B - DES MOINES AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $4,000 |
| FLANDREAU HIGH SCHOOL | $4,000 |
| WEST DES MOINES HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $3,400 |
| VICTOR M H - KIRKWOOD COMMUNITY COLLEGE | $2,000 |
| ANTHONY W - IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY | $2,000 |
| SMILE TRAIN | $1,000 |
| EAST HIGH SCHOOL ALUMNI FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
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 (FY18–24, $38k) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 65% 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.
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 7% of Wittern Family Charitable 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.
37 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 33 since wound down; 6 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, 17% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $64k 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
DRAKE UNIVERSITY8× · 2017–2024 · $125k · revenue +20%- SASt Anne's Episcopal School Inc4× · 2017–2020 · $41k · revenue +41%
- CCCLIVE COMMUNITY SERVICES4× · 2019–2022 · $19k · revenue +97%
Funded once
- BPBLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2024 · $22k · revenue -5%
- OPORCHARD PLACE FOUNDATIONone grant, 2024 · $8k · revenue +1%
- JAJUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF CENTRAL IOWA INCgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $8k · revenue +135%
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.
Common good iowa engages iowans to create and advocate for research-based public policy that makes life better and more equitable for all who make iowa home.
Unite the caring power of communities to invest in effective solutions to improve people's lives.
The foundation is organized to further the growth and development of private colleges and universities of higher education in iowa.
Seeking to build a stronger, more caring community by forming partnerships with businesses, community experts, education & health & human service agencies to achieve targeted outcomes & sustained changes in community conditions which will…
The university of iowa facilities corporation acquires and holds property for the benefit and use of the university of iowa.
Founded in 1995 as the philanthropic arm of the iowa credit union league and guided by the credit union philosophy of "people helping people", the iowa credit union foundation (the foundation) works to champion financial well-being for…
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.
The foundation for the iowa city community school district connects the community with our schools to ensure every student has extraordinary learning experiences. together we empower teachers and district staff and inspire students to…
Connecting families affected by childhood cancer by providing opportunities that encourage relationships and strengthen community.
Mica helps families experencing poverty meet their needs, build on their strengths, and achieve their goals.
The university of iowa center for advancement's mission is to advance the university of iowa through engagement and philanthropy. we serve our alumni and friends in the state and the region, throughout the country, and around the world. we…
The foundation works to defend and promote the constitution of the united states, focusing especially on the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and 14th amendments. the foundation also works to defend and promote the constitution of the…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Orchard Place Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Iowa 80 Trucking Museum. 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 34 years old; the field is 38. You back the younger 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 — 0.0% 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.
57 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. 57 of the 109 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 DRAKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds MADISON COUNTY FOUNDATION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds St Anne's Episcopal School Inc ↗
- Who funds GREAT OUTDOORS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds BLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CLIVE COMMUNITY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds INTEGRATED COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds VARIETY - THE CHILDREN'S CHARITY OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds ROUTT COUNTY RIDERS ↗
- Who funds MALTZ JUPITER THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds BERGMAN ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds ORCHARD PLACE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF CENTRAL IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds SMILE TRAIN INC ↗
- Who funds THE LOWELL WHITEMAN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Hope for Justice Inc ↗
- Who funds WEST DES MOINES HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BALANCE AUTISM ↗
- Who funds CHILDSERVE INC ↗
- Who funds MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER ↗
- Who funds ALPFA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS-IOWA INC ↗
- Who funds WINONA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NORTHWEST ROCKY MOUNTAIN CASA ↗
- Who funds AHEINZ57 PET RESCUE & TRANSPORT 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: Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · Ita Group Foundation · Meredith Corporation Foundation · The West Bancorporation Foundation Inc · EMC Insurance Foundation · Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · Businessolver Foundation · William C Knapp Charitable Fdn · Athene Charitable Foundation · Pella Rolscreen 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 Wittern Family Charitable 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.
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 Wittern Family Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Wittern Family Charitable Foundation 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.