· Private foundation
Brian & Sonya Emerick Family Foundation Inc
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.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 63% of BRIAN & SONYA EMERICK FAMILY FOUNDATION INC’s grantee dollars fall outside its nine largest cause areas, whether because the recipient carries no IRS cause code or because its cause sits in the long tail. A chart would be mostly one residual band and misrepresent the portfolio.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k20 grants · $34k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $69k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| YOUTH FOR CHRIST | $35,000 |
| EMMANUEL COMMUNITY CHURCH | $24,000 |
| UNITY PERFORMING ARTS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| EMMANUEL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE | $5,000 |
| STAR 883 | $5,000 |
| FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES | $4,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,000 |
| THE CENTER FOR WHITLEY COUNTY YOUTH | $2,000 |
| HUNTINGTON UNIVERSITY | $2,000 |
| FORT WAYNE CHILDREN'S ZOO | $1,886 |
| A HOPE CENTER | $1,000 |
| LIFEWISE ACADEMY | $1,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF WHITLEY CO | $1,000 |
| WHITLEY CTY 4-H | $600 |
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 (FY19–25, $7k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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 +70% since the first grant, against +57% for the ones you funded once.
30 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 9 since wound down; 2 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- HUHuntington University7× · 2019–2025 · $146k · revenue +31%
- SESTAR EDUCATIONAL MEDIA NETWORK INC7× · 2019–2025 · $35k · revenue +10%
- FWFORT WAYNE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY INC7× · 2019–2025 · $32k · revenue +70%
Funded once
- NSNORTH SIDE HIGH SCHOOLone grant, 2023 · $2k
- OONECAUSEone grant, 2023 · $1k
- TCTURNSTONE CENTER FOR CHILDREN & ADUone grant, 2024 · $1k
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.
Indiana wesleyan university is a christ-centered academic community committed to changing the world by developing students in character, scholarship, and leadership.
Indianapolis christian school system strives to honor christ in partnership with parents and the christian community by educating and motivating students to excel in future academic pursuits, to develop a confident christian worldview, and…
The school's objective is to provide an excellent, christ-centered education, equipping students for a life of scholarship, leadership, and service.
To meet the special needs of each child and family served in order to help improve their quality of life. the board of trustees and staff members of the home are committed to bringing the highest quality resources available to the…
Child evangelism fellowship is a bible-centered, interdenominational, worldwide organization, composed of born-again believers whose purpose and mission are to evangelize boys and girls with the gospel of the lord jesus christ, disciple…
Provides conference center and camping facilities for religious, educational and charitable groups in central and southern indiana.
The Mission of WBCL is to communicate God's redemptive love, grace, and truth through captivating media.
Lead the transformation of healthcare through quality, innovation & education, and make Indiana one of the nation's healthiest states.
The mission of indiana wish is to grant wishes to indiana children ages 3 -18 diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.
Our mission is to honor and obey god by providing hope and healing to children and families, who may then bless others. the residential, foster care, adoption and other programs served nearly 500 individuals during the year.
Indiana united way is the leading voice to advocate, engage, and partner with a strong united way network and key stakeholders to advance human well-being throughout indiana.
Dedicated to igniting personal transformation by affirming faith, inspiring hope, and equipping individuals, to live an intentional life in christ.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lifewise Inc and the most unlike its peers is Lamb Foundation. 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 33 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
21 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. 21 of the 52 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 Huntington University ↗
- Who funds UNITY PERFORMING ARTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds STAR EDUCATIONAL MEDIA NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds FORT WAYNE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR WHITLEY COUNTY YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES ↗
- Who funds Passages Inc ↗
- Who funds NORTHEAST INDIANA CHRISTIAN ACTION COUNCIL EDUCATIONAL & CHARITABLE FU ↗
- Who funds BLOOD CANCER UNITED INC ↗
- Who funds SOULMEDIC MEDIA GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds ALLIANCE DEFENDING FREEDOM ↗
- Who funds LAMB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ANTHONY WAYNE REHABILITATION CENTER FOR HANDICAPPED AND BLIND INC ↗
- Who funds LIFEWISE INC ↗
- Who funds Indiana Barn Foundation Incorporated ↗
- Who funds LC NATURE PARK INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF WHITLEY COUNTY 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: Whitley County Community Foundation Inc · Lincoln Financial Foundation Inc · Brotherhood Mutual Foundation Inc · Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne Inc · Edward M Wilson Foundation · Dr Louis a and Anne B Schneider Fdn · English-Bonter-Mitchell Fdn · Parkview Health System Inc · The James Foundation Inc · Nisource Charitable Foundation · Howard P Arnold Foundation Inc · M E Raker Foundation 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 Brian & Sonya Emerick Family Foundation Inc 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 Brian & Sonya Emerick Family Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Brian & Sonya Emerick Family Foundation Inc 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.