· Private foundation
Ball Brothers Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k42 grants · $190k
- $10k–50k32 grants · $717k
- $50k–250k34 grants · $3.3M
- $250k+5 grants · $4.1M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| MINNETRISTA MUSEUM & GARDENS | $2,790,000 |
| MUNCIE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS | $469,000 |
| YMCA OF MUNCIE | $290,000 |
| WHITELEY COMMUNITY COUNCIL | $255,000 |
| BALL STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF MUNCIE | $210,000 |
| GREATER MUNCIE IN HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $200,000 |
| CARDINAL GREENWAY INC | $200,000 |
| CORNERSTONE CENTER FOR THE ARTS | $200,000 |
| BALL STATE UNIVERSITY | $175,000 |
| SUSTAINABLE MUNCIE CORPORATION | $175,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF MUNCIE & DE | $165,000 |
| UNITED DAY CARE CENTER OF DE COUNTY | $129,000 |
| ECI REGIONAL PARTNERSHIP INC | $115,000 |
| DELAWARE COUNTY PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE | $100,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 100% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +15% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
147 repeat relationships — 84 still active in FY2024, 63 since wound down; 21 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (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 FY2024, 63% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $3.0M 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
- YMYOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF MUNCIE INDIANA INC6× · 2019–2024 · $2.9M · revenue +62%
- BSBall State University Foundation Inc7× · 2017–2024 · $2.2M · revenue +49%
- PLPROJECT LEADERSHIP INC7× · 2017–2023 · $1.7M · revenue +196% · 76% of their budget
Funded once
- RCROY C BULEY COMMUNITY CENTER INCone grant, 2017 · $200k · 50% of their budget
- IDINDIANA DEPT OF NATURAL RESOURCESone grant, 2022 · $60k
- ALAMERICAN LEGION CHARITIESone grant, 2019 · $59k
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.
To be an action-oriented, visionary organization which will stimulate progress, foster economic growth and enhance individual opportunity to achieve a high quality of life for everyone.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
Promote and educate indiana residents on the state's economic success and positive gains.
To empower its peers with disabilities to lead and control their own lives.
Promote development in Perry County, Indiana
Educate, Inspire, Connect and Mobilize Community Leaders to serve and strengthen greater Indianapolis.
To enhance the competitive position and fulfill business requirements of independent agents and brokers, advocating buyer interest, and continually striving to be the premier trade association.
Trusted journalism, inspiring stories and lifelong learning.
Enroll indy helps families choose schools that meet their children's needs by providing a one-stop enrollment process, school information that is relevant and easy to understand, and data to inform school improvement in indianapolis,…
Indianapolis Downtown Marketing, Inc. (IDMI) exists to improve downtown Indianapolis. IDMI focuses on marketing downtown businesses, destinations, organizations, activities and events.
To develop and promote development and growth of the convention, recreation and visitor industry in the county of delaware, state of indiana.
An agribusiness network advocate, representing members' interests within all levels of government and keeping members informed of the latest industry trends and news.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Heart of Indiana United Way Inc and the most unlike its peers is Ecorehab of Muncie 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 38 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
106 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. 106 of the 240 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
Showing your 200 largest grantees by grant value.
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 YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF MUNCIE INDIANA INC ↗
- Who funds CARDINAL GREENWAY INC ↗
- Who funds Ball State University Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds PROJECT LEADERSHIP INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER MUNCIE INDIANA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds MUNCIE BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds IVY TECH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ROSS COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CORNERSTONE CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE MUNCIE CORP ↗
- Who funds Independent Colleges of Indiana Inc ↗
- Who funds DELAWARE ADVANCEMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds ECOREHAB OF MUNCIE INC ↗
- Who funds James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association ↗
- Who funds MUNCIE SPORTS COMMISSION INC ↗
- Who funds RED-TAIL LAND CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds INDIANA YOUTH INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds Open Door Health Services Inc ↗
- Who funds MUNCIE LAND BANK INC ↗
- Who funds TEENWORKS INC ↗
- Who funds YOUTH OPPORTUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds INNOVATION CONNECTOR INC ↗
- Who funds MERIDIAN HEALTH SERVICES CORP ↗
- Who funds MOTIVATE OUR MINDS INC ↗
- Who funds MUNCIE CIVIC THEATRE ↗
- Who funds HUFFER MEMORIAL CHILDREN'S CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds WHITELY COMMUNITY COUNCIL 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: The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County Inc · George and Frances Ball Foundation · Heart of Indiana United Way Inc · Mutualbank Charitable Foundation Inc · Lilly Endowment Inc · Hamer D & Phyllis C Shafer Foundation Charitable Trust · Sherman and Marjorie Zeigler Foundation Inc · American Electric Power Foundation · Muncie Endurathon Inc · Centerpoint Energy Foundation Inc · Community Foundation of Randolph County Inc · Indiana University Health Ball Memorial Hospital Inc
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 Ball Brothers 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 Ball Brothers Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ball Brothers 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.