· Public charity
Athens County Foundation
The ATHENS COUNTY FOUNDATION builds on the strengths of our community, advancing participation and collaboration to address long standing challenges and pursue extraordinary opportunities.
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.
The 36 grants below total $594,470 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $741,662 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $147,192 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 $10k19 grants · $142k
- $10k–50k15 grants · $259k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $194k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OHIO UNIVERSITY | $98,600 |
| RURAL ACTION | $95,257 |
| HOCKING ATHENS PERRY COMMUNITY AC | $40,642 |
| ACENET INC | $34,655 |
| OHIO VALLEY MUSUEM OF DISCOVERY | $21,469 |
| UNITED SENIORS OF ATHENS | $20,000 |
| ATHENS CO CHILDREN SERVICES | $16,226 |
| ATHENS MENTAL HEALTH DBA THE GP | $15,913 |
| ATHENS AREA MEDIATION SERVICES | $15,000 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF SE OHIO | $14,961 |
| NELSONVILLE-YORK CITY SCHOOLS | $12,943 |
| HERBERT WESCOAT MEMORIAL LIBRARY | $11,746 |
| SYLVESTER MEMORIAL WELLSTON PUBLIC | $11,746 |
| ALEXANDER PARENT TEACHER ORGANIZATI | $11,500 |
| ATHENS CO DEPT OF JFS | $11,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $333k) land where the poverty rate runs at 21%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 98% 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.
49 repeat relationships — 27 still active in FY2025, 22 since wound down; 8 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $72k 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
- HCHOCKINGATHENSPERRY COMMUNITY ACTION8× · 2017–2025 · $406k · revenue +59%
- RARURAL ACTION INC7× · 2017–2025 · $281k · revenue +244%
- HFHABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF SE OHIO6× · 2017–2025 · $128k · revenue +244%
Funded once
- BCBLUEDOT COWORKINGone grant, 2024 · $130k
- LALEGAL AID OF SOUTHEAST AND CENTRAL OHIOgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $20k · revenue +107%
- AEAthens-Meigs Educational Service Centerone grant, 2022 · $17k
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.
Outdoor recreation opportunity
Advocacy for elders who are abused, neglected or exploited.
Advocacy for the mentally ill
Provide services to the victims of domestic voilence
Ballot issue political action committee advocating for levy to support the homelessness population in Ohio.
The SOAR Initiative exists to provide people who use drugs throughout Ohio with free resources, information, and support. We focus on building technology-based solutions to the opiod overdose crisis, particularly for rural areas and those…
To promote the common good and general welfare of ohioans.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Athens County Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Factory Street Studio & Moving Parts Inc. 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 24 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 8% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
67 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. 67 of the 101 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 HOCKINGATHENSPERRY COMMUNITY ACTION ↗
- Who funds RURAL ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF SE OHIO ↗
- Who funds OHIO VALLEY MUSEUM OF DISCOVERYINC ↗
- Who funds INTEGRATED SERVICES FOR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH ↗
- Who funds ATHENS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds United Seniors of Athens County Inc ↗
- Who funds APPALACHIAN CENTER FOR ECONOMIC NETWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds LIVE HEALTHY APPALACHIA INC FERRIER LAW OFFICE ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST OHIO INDEPENDENT NEWS ↗
- Who funds DAIRY BARN SE OHIO CULTURAL ARTS ↗
- Who funds RECOVERY CONNECTIONS OF SOUTHEAST OHIO ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF CENTRAL OHIO ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOOD INITIATIVES ↗
- Who funds SURVIVOR ADVOCACY OUTREACH PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST OHIO FREE PHARMACY DBA RISING SUN ↗
- Who funds WOMEN FOR RECOVERY ↗
- Who funds ALEXANDER PARENT TEACHER ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds STUARTS OPERA HOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE ATHENS VILLAGE ↗
- Who funds ATHENS PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT ↗
- Who funds PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF GREATER OHIO ↗
- Who funds BIRTH CIRCLE INC ↗
- Who funds GLOUSTER REVITALIZATION ORGANIZATIO ↗
- Who funds PASSION WORKS ↗
- Who funds THE NELSONVILLE FOOD CUPBOARD INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds HOPEWELL HEALTH CENTERS INC ↗
- Who funds ATHENS AREA MEDIATION SERVICE ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID OF SOUTHEAST AND CENTRAL OHIO ↗
- Who funds MOUNT ZION BAPTIST CHURCH PRESERVATION SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEAST OHIO YOUTH MENTORING ↗
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: Foundation for Appalachian Ohio · Sisters of St Joseph Charitable Fund Inc · Peoples Bank Foundation · Columbus Foundation · Johnson Charitable Gift Fund · Osteopathic Heritage Foundation of Nelsonville · Osteopathic Heritage Foundation · Community Foundations Inc · OhioHealth Corporation · United Way of Central Ohio Inc · American Electric Power Foundation · O'Bleness Charles - 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 Athens County 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.