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Avery Les and Ruth Charitable Trust at a glance

· Private foundation

Avery Les and Ruth Charitable Trust

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.

$228k
Granted FY2025still arriving
6
Grants FY2025still arriving
2
States reached
$57k
Largest
01What it fundsRead
02The needRead
03Its granteesRead
04Its fieldRead
01What it funds
01100% classified

What it funded, over time

Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year, FY2018 to 2025.

Religion$1.1MInternational$440kArts & Culture$264k
02FY2025 · 6 grants

Where the money goes

Grants by size, and the largest recipients.

By grant size · FY2025

  • $10k–50k4 grants · $114k
  • $50k–250k2 grants · $114k
$34,200
Median grant
2
States reached
$3.9M
Total assets
Largest grants
RecipientAmount
LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF$57,000
LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD$57,000
WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD$34,200
CONCORDIA SEMINARY$28,500
CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY$28,497
IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH$22,800
02The need
03

Does the money reach high-need areas?

Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, against the area’s typical level.

show:

Dollar for dollar, its grants (FY18–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 10%, against an area that typically sits at 8%. 100% of its dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of its grants land in higher-need ZIPs.

area typical 8%WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD: $37k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF: $62k → 11%CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: $31k → 12%WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD: $34k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD: $62k → 11%CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: $28k → 12%WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD: $34k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD: $61k → 11%CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: $28k → 12%WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD: $32k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF: $57k → 11%CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: $27k → 12%WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD: $32k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD: $57k → 11%CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: $26k → 12%WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD: $32k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD: $56k → 11%CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: $26k → 12%WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD: $32k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF: $56k → 11%CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: $26k → 12%WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD: $31k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF: $54k → 11%CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: $26k → 12%IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH: $25k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD: $54k → 11%IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH: $23k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF: $53k → 11%IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH: $23k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD: $53k → 11%IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH: $22k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD: $53k → 11%IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH: $21k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF: $53k → 11%IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH: $21k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF: $53k → 11%IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH: $21k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD: $52k → 11%IMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH: $21k → 9%LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF: $52k → 11%CONCORDIA SEMINARY: $31k → 11%CONCORDIA SEMINARY: $29k → 11%CONCORDIA SEMINARY: $28k → 11%CONCORDIA SEMINARY: $27k → 11%CONCORDIA SEMINARY: $26k → 11%CONCORDIA SEMINARY: $26k → 11%CONCORDIA SEMINARY: $26k → 11%CONCORDIA SEMINARY: $26k → 11%0%20%40%50%more need →
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
How this is measured
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP.
How this is measured
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are delivered. Need from public data (U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA), shown as context about the area, never attributed to the funder’s giving.
03Its grantees
repeat funding

Who it funds again

Organizations funded in more than one year, against those funded once.

100%of every dollar goes to organizations it has funded before.
$1.8M · 6 repeat orgs$0 to everyone else

6 repeat relationships: 6 still active in FY2025, 0 since wound down.

How the two cohorts compare

Re-uppedFunded once

Organizations

6
0

Total granted

$1.8M
$0

Still filing today

0%
0%

New vs renewed · share of each year

In FY2025, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 went to new ones.

50%100%’18’19’20’21’22’23’24’25
RenewedFirst-time
How this is measured
First-time means a grantee’s first year in the filing window; renewed means funded in an earlier year too. The renewed share climbs naturally as a portfolio matures, so the signal is a year that bucks it (a wave of new grantees). 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

  • LC
    LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD
    8× · 2018–2025 · $448k
  • LC
    LUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF
    8× · 2018–2025 · $440k
  • WP
    WASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD
    8× · 2018–2025 · $264k

Funded once

    How this is measured

    Repeat means funded in two or more distinct years. Growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.

    04Its field
    04the grantee network

    0 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2018–2025.

    Each grant beside the grantee’s revenue from every source, year by year.

    How this is measured

    Counted here: distinct organizations funded across 2018 to 2025, not grant rows in a single year, so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 0 of the 6 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile.

    Each grantee is resolved to its own IRS returns. Association, dated; never a causal claim.

    0
    Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
    0
    Early backer (in before they grew)
    0/0
    Grantees still filing
    0/0
    Grew since first funded

    Where the money sits, by cause and then by grantee

    LUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNOD: $448,303 · OtherLUTHERAN CHURCH MO SYNODLUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEF: $439,704 · OtherLUTHERAN CHURCH MO WORLD RELIEFWASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FD: $263,822 · OtherWASHINGTON PUB LIB DEV FDCONCORDIA SEMINARY: $219,852 · OtherCONCORDIA SEMINARYCONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: $219,849 · OtherCONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARYIMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH: $175,881 · OtherIMMANUEL LUTHERAN CHURCH
    Other$1,767,411

    Each grantee by its size and the funder’s share of it; top left is load-bearing

    25%50%75%100%grantee revenue →↑ funder's share of their budget
    Grantee by grantee: a decade per organization, before and after funding

    A decade per grantee: revenue shaded, grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.

    On method. Every financial figure here is read from IRS e-file XML, the funder’s own 990/990-PF, and from the multi-year returns of the 6 grantees we resolved, each linked to its source. Grantee outcomes are each organization’s own program-service reporting (Form 990, Part III), read as association with funding, never as caused by it. Low-confidence name matches are suppressed rather than guessed. How we build these →

    How this is measured
    Each figure carries one of six labels. Filed is what the funder reported on its return. Official is another government record about an organization, such as a federal award or a charity register, joined by name where no shared identifier exists. Resolved is an identity we worked out where the filing named a recipient without an EIN, kept only above a measured confidence threshold. Computed is arithmetic over those, like themes, portfolio clusters and co-funder strength. Context is a statistic about a place rather than about an organization, which is what the need overlay is: it describes the area a grantee’s address sits in, not where its work lands. Inferred is drawn by a model from text, like the partnerships read out of public news and organization websites. Each is labeled where it appears.

    Generated from the IRS Form 990-PF e-file return for fiscal year 2025, released 2025. Filings run roughly 12 to 24 months behind; figures are dated accordingly.

    Source object · view filing

    Play a game based on Avery Les and Ruth’s filings →

    More from the funding graph

    The unnamed billions
    grants reported with no recipient in the public record
    The regranting layer
    51% of grant dollars land in the regranting layer
    The DAF merry-go-round
    $9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
    The endowment market
    who holds foundation money, and what just moved
    The camps
    funders cluster by geography, not ideology
    By state
    where grant money is based, and what stays home