Grantmakers › Iowa

Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation

Johnston, IA · EIN 26-0762771. Reported 315 grants totalling $11.0M to 176 organizations across tax years 2021-2024, on Form 990 Schedule I.

Does this grantmaker accept applications?

Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.

Three things in the filing do bear on it:

1. What kind of organization it is. For Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation, the IRS classifies it under health care rather than as a grantmaker (NTEE E70) -- it is an operating charity that also makes grants.
2. How spread out its giving is. 176 distinct organizations, with 14% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is genuinely spread out -- the mark of a funder making many independent decisions rather than underwriting one institution.
3. How much its list changes. 28% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 3 year-to-year transitions. That is below the 57% median for grantmaking charities, and well below the 67% private foundations manage. A list that turns over this much is one a newcomer can realistically join.

How big are its grants?

The median reported grant is $15,000. Half of what it reported fell between $5,029 and $25,000; the smallest was $113 and the largest $991,318. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.

101 of those grants were non-cash -- goods, property or services worth $549,591 in total. In-kind giving is real support but it is not a cheque.

Every organization it funded

This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.

44 of 176 (25%) received money in more than one year over the 4 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.

What the money was for

Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.

• Crescent Community Health Center $991,318 · 2022
  FUNDING FOR DENTAL CLINIC AND LAB EXPANSION; DENTAL/HYGIENIST DENTAL RESIDENCY/EDUCATION.
• Dental Connections (form Des Moines Health Center) $505,000 · 2023
  CONFERENCE TRAVEL FOR IOWA SMILES PRESENTATIONS, IOWA SMILES REFUGEE CARE COORDINATION, AND SMILE SQUAD MOBILE DENTAL CLINIC GRANTS
• Eastern Iowa Health Center $500,000 · 2021
  FUNDING TO EXPAND INTEGRATED ORAL HEALTH CARE FOR EASTERN IOWA MEDICAID PATIENTS
• Vision to Learn $454,290 · 2023
  NETWORKING AND CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF VISON TO LEARN PROGRAMMING AND VISION TO LEARN IOWA - CAPACITY BUILDING TO INCREASE ACCESS TO VISION CARE GRANTS
• Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (formerly Iowa Department of P $412,988 · 2024
  I-SMILE @ SCHOOL FFY 25 AND I-SMILE SILVER GRANTS
• Iowa Department of Health and Human Services $395,865 · 2023
  I-SMILE @SCHOOL FFY24 AND I-SMILE SILVER PILOT PROJECT GRANTS

What kind of organizations it funds

By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 81 of 176 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.

Giving by year

Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.

Where its money goes

87% of its giving went to organizations in Iowa. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.

Down to the city

Funders that support the same organizations

These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.

How to approach this grantmaker

1. Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
2. Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $15,000 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
3. Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Iowa.
4. Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.

Where these numbers come from

Everything above is taken from Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2021-2024). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.

On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 60 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 1 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.

Address of record on the latest return: 9000 Northpark Drive, Johnston, IA, 50131.

EIN 26-0762771 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this

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