· Private foundation
Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust
Its FY2023 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 FY2017–2023.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- $50k–250k5 grants · $425k
- $250k+1 grant · $250k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FORT DES MOINES MUSEUM AND EDUCATIO | $250,000 |
| LIVING HISTORY FARMS FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| DSM PARK AND REC FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| WAUKEE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH | $100,000 |
| EVERLY BALL COMM MENTAL HEALTH SVCS | $62,500 |
| IOWA HEALTH FOUNDATION | $62,500 |
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 (FY17–22, $1.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 99% 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.
47 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2023, 42 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (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 FY2023, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $250k 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
- BPBLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INC2× · 2018–2020 · $350k · revenue +71%
- YAYOUTH AND SHELTER SERVICES INC2× · 2017–2018 · $250k · revenue +145%
- LHLIVING HISTORY FARMS FOUNDATION2× · 2017–2023 · $200k · revenue +18%
Funded once
- DMDES MOINES PUBLIC SCHOOLS ACADEMYone grant, 2020 · $200k
- DPDSM PUBLIC SCHOOLS CENTRAL ACADEMYone grant, 2018 · $200k
- TRTHEODORE ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOL FOUNone grant, 2021 · $150k
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.
Exploring, explaining and celebrating the world of plants.
To provide high-quality and compassionate care to community members approaching the end of life.
Provide holistic and innovative solutions that strengthen neighborhoods. we do this through strategic investments in real estate and partnerships to improve quality of life.
Building iowa's values by recognizing and responding to significantchanges in iowa - those that fundamentally affect families and communities.
The foundation is organized to further the growth and development of private colleges and universities of higher education in iowa.
The organization's mission is to address the immediate needs of sick, injured, and orphaned wild birds, with the goal to return them to the wild and help educate and bring awareness to the global issue that birds are dissappearing at an…
To provide shelter and services to families experiencing homelessness
Unite the caring power of communities to invest in effective solutions to improve people's lives.
To improve member newspapers
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.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Downtown Events Group Inc and the most unlike its peers is Evergreen Cemetery. 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 30 years old; the field is 55. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 7% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 4% 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.
61 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. 61 of the 113 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 BLANK PARK ZOO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH AND SHELTER SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds IOWA HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES HERITAGE TRUST ↗
- Who funds LIVING HISTORY FARMS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FOOD BANK OF IOWA ↗
- Who funds ON WITH LIFE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOMES OF OAKRIDGE HUMAN SERVICES ↗
- Who funds MAINFRAME STUDIOS ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF CENTRAL IOWA ↗
- Who funds ORCHARD PLACE ↗
- Who funds WAUKEE BAND PARENTS ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds EAST HIGH SCHOOL ALUMNI FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY YOUTH CONCEPTS ↗
- Who funds DES MOINES AREA RELIGIOUS COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds ON WITH LIFE INC ↗
- Who funds ALEX BROWN FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDSERVE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ELLIPSIS INC ↗
- Who funds HOYT SHERMAN PLACE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds IOWA PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds Eat Greater Des Moines ↗
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: Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino Inc · Community Fdn of Greater Des Moines F/K/A Greater Des Moines Community Fdn · EMC Insurance Foundation · Meredith Corporation Foundation · The Merchants Bonding Company Foundation · The West Bancorporation Foundation Inc · Ita Group Foundation · William C Knapp Charitable Fdn · Golf Charitable Foundation of Greater Des Moines · United Way of Central Iowa · John Ruan Foundation Trust · Gartner Family Foundation % Michael G Gartner
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 Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust 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 Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust?
Find your warmest path to Wt and Edna M Dahl Trust 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.