· Community foundation
Bridge Builders Community Foundations Fka Venango Area Comm Foundation
The foundation serves clarion, forest and venango counties to develop, manage, and disrtibute funding to meet the present and future needs of the communities.
What you funded, over time
By grantee IRS cause code (NTEE).
A cause breakdown isn’t shown here: 73% of BRIDGE BUILDERS COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS FKA VENANGO AREA COMM FOUNDATION’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.
The 33 grants below total $1,255,554 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,417,705 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $162,151 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 · FY2024
- Under $10k19 grants · $138k
- $10k–50k7 grants · $143k
- $50k–250k6 grants · $475k
- $250k+1 grant · $499k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED WAY OF VENANGO COUNTY | $499,270 |
| FRANKLIN CIVIC OPERETTA ASSOCIATION | $100,000 |
| FRANKLIN CIVIC OPERETTA ASSOCIATION | $100,000 |
| ECCLES-LESHER MEMORIAL LIBRARY | $98,000 |
| OIL REGION LIBRARY ASSOCIATION | $76,851 |
| OIL CITY ARTS COUNCIL | $50,000 |
| ALLEGHENY VALLEY TRAILS ASSOCIATION | $50,000 |
| OIL CITY LIBRARY | $31,500 |
| NORTHWESTERN ROOFING CO INC | $24,949 |
| NORTHWESTERN ROOFING CO INC | $24,949 |
| Individual grant recipient | $21,285 |
| FRANKLIN CIVIC OPERETTA ASSOCIATION | $15,264 |
| COOPERSTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY | $15,000 |
| FRANKLIN ROTARY FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| SCENIC RIVERS YMCA | $9,724 |
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 (FY18–24, $206k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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 +26% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
58 repeat relationships — 15 still active in FY2024, 43 since wound down; 11 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, 82% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $221k 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
- UWUNITED WAY OF VENANGO COUNTY AND TITUSVILLE REGION4× · 2018–2024 · $750k · revenue +238% · 40% of their budget
- OROIL REGION LIBRARY ASSOCIATION8× · 2017–2024 · $249k · revenue +64%
- VAVENANGO AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE5× · 2018–2023 · $238k · revenue +21% · 26% of their budget
Funded once
- HAHEETER AND ASSOCIATESone grant, 2020 · $115k
- OCOIL CITY MAIN STREET PROGRAMone grant, 2017 · $90k
- TCTHE CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF TORTUREone grant, 2020 · $82k · revenue +23%
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.
All volunteer fire department provides fire and rescue services to the surrounding communities.
Local volunteer fire department providing fire protection and rescue services to the citizens of romney wv and surrounding areas.
To promote the study of the history of venango county and its general area and to develop an interest in the study of venango county and its citizens.
The purposes for which the fire company was founded are: (1) to afford all possible protection against personal injury and/or property damage resulting from fire and other catastrophe; (2) to provide assistance to persons threatened or…
Volunteer fire company
Responds nbsp;to nbsp;fire nbsp;calls nbsp;vehicle nbsp;accidents nbsp;water nbsp;rescue nbsp;and nbsp;other nbsp;human nbsp;disasters nbsp;trains nbsp;and nbsp;educates nbsp;both nbsp;volunteer nbsp;firemen nbsp;and nbsp;the nbsp;general…
To provide fire protection and emergency rescue services to those in vernon township and surrounding areas of crawford county in pennsylvania. the organization ceased operations related to fire protection and emergency rescue services in…
Provide emergency medical services and fire runs Training of volunteer EMS and fire personnel maintenance and repair of equipment.
Volunteer fire company
Non profit volunteer fire department for the city of vienna, wv and surrounding areas. committed to educating communities about fire and safety.
Community ambulance service serving residents in the greater bloomsburg, pennsylvania area
Volunteer fire and emergency medical services
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Glade Run and the most unlike its peers is Franklin Rotary 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 32 years old; the field is 25. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 16% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 7% 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.
57 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. 57 of the 153 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 UNITED WAY OF VENANGO COUNTY AND TITUSVILLE REGION ↗
- Who funds OIL REGION LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds VENANGO AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ↗
- Who funds FRANKLIN CIVIC OPERETTA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds Wellesley College ↗
- Who funds THE SCENIC RIVERS YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds THE CENTER FOR VICTIMS OF TORTURE ↗
- Who funds MARYLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA INC ↗
- Who funds HAVEN HOUSE ↗
- Who funds MCDANIEL COLLEGE INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COUNTY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COUNTY FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds Bread For The World Inc ↗
- Who funds LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF INC ↗
- Who funds Mar-Lu-Ridge Camp and Retreat Center Inc ↗
- Who funds VENANGO COUNTY FAIR INC ↗
- Who funds ALLEGHENY VALLEY TRAILS ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds PRECIOUS PAWS ANIMAL RESCUE ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY SERVICES OF VENANGO 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: Samuel-Edith Justus Char Trust · Arthur W Phillips Trust Uw · Fair Frederick&Ellen Memorial · Edward V & Jessie L Peters Charitable Trust · McElhattan Foundation · Elizabeth S Black Charitable Trust · Northwest Charitable Foundation · Edith C Justus Tuw · Second Harvest Food Bank of Nw Pa Inc · Upmc Group · Nelson Eleanor & Rudolph-Char Tr · Eileen J Luce Charitable Trust
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 Bridge Builders Community Foundations Fka Venango Area Comm 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.
- Lutheran World Relief Inc — 47% of income from government
- Maryland Symphony Orchestra Inc — 5% of income from government
- Washington County Museum of Fine Arts — 2% of income from government
- Wellesley College — 1% of income from government
- Mcdaniel College Inc — 0% of income from government
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.