· Private foundation
Brooks Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k7 grants · $39k
- $10k–50k14 grants · $194k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| The Learning Lamp | $20,000 |
| PITTSBURGH FILMMAKERS INC | $20,000 |
| WATER STREET MINISTRIES | $17,200 |
| HUGH LANE WELLNESS FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| NATIONAL AVIARY IN PITTSBURGH INC | $15,000 |
| FAMILIES MATTER FOOD PANTRY | $15,000 |
| BOTTLE WORKSETHNIC ARTS CENTER | $15,000 |
| SAINT JOHNS HOSPICE | $13,417 |
| WOMEN AND GIRLS FOUNDATION | $13,117 |
| FEEDING THE SPIRIT | $10,000 |
| PITTSBURGH KIDS FOUNDATION INC | $10,000 |
| GRETNA PRODUCTIONS INC | $10,000 |
| PITTSBURGH YOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $10,000 |
| JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT OF SOUTH | $10,000 |
| SOCIETY TO PRESERVE THE MILLVALE MURALS | $9,000 |
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, $329k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 95% 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 +28% since the first grant, against +13% for the ones you funded once.
13 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 10 since wound down; 18 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, 14% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $200k 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
- ICIMANI CHRISTIAN ACADEMY2× · 2017–2022 · $42k · revenue +43%
- HLHUGH LANE WELLNESS FOUNDATION INC2× · 2023–2025 · $42k · revenue +12%
- WMWESTMORELAND MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART2× · 2019–2022 · $40k · revenue +77%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2022 · $70k
- CCCATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THEone grant, 2021 · $58k
- UMUNITED METHODIST CHURCH UNIONone grant, 2018 · $38k · revenue -34%
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.
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
To provide a means for sharing resources and information among members, engage in joint projects, and offer a common voice on educational matters.
See schedule o.we are inspired by the ideals of our founder who, in 1896, emphasized respect for all people and ideas, who honored knowledge with practice, progress and the common good. our historical commitment to experiential learning…
The western pennsylvania conservancy protects and restores exceptional places to provide our region with clean waters and healthy forests, wildlife and natural areas for the benefit of present and future generations. the conservancy…
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
To support education and research at college, university, and research libraries.
Duquesne serves god by serving students-through commitment to excellence in liberal and professional education, through profound concern for moral and spiritual values, through the maintenance of an ecumenical atmosphere open to diversity,…
To create and distribute trusted content, build connections and strengthen our community through public media.
We, pittsburgh mercy health system (pittsburgh mercy) and trinity health, serve together in the spirit of the gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within our communities. pittsburgh mercy is a member of trinity…
Gettysburg college is a residential, undergraduate college of the liberal arts and sciences.
The mission of pittsburgh arts & lectures is to connect celebrated authors with the community, elevate civic discourse, and inspire creativity and a passion for the literary arts. our commitment to knowledge, learning, integrity, and…
To create a vibrant, responsible, and sustainable film and digital media sector in southwestern pennsylvania.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is North Hills Community Outreach Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Bottleworks Inc Ethnic Arts Center. 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 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
105 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. 105 of the 144 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 LA ROCHE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds COALITION FOR CHRISTIAN OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds IMANI CHRISTIAN ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds HUGH LANE WELLNESS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WESTMORELAND MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART ↗
- Who funds BEVERLY'S PGH ↗
- Who funds UNITED METHODIST CHURCH UNION ↗
- Who funds SOUTH HILLS CATHOLIC ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds VERLAND FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PITTSBURGH NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE ↗
- Who funds THE CHALLENGE PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds PITTSBURGH PENGUINS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HOLY FAMILY INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DEPAUL OF PHILADE OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds THE SEED SCHOOL OF MARYLAND ↗
- Who funds CHALLENGED ATHLETES INC ↗
- Who funds THE LEARNING LAMP INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIETY OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL OF BUFFALO & WESTERN NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds CARNEGIE LIBRARY OF PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds PITTSBURGH FILMMAKERS INC ↗
- Who funds PINE-RICHLAND YOUTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds CARLOW UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds EMMAUS COMMUNITY OF PITTSBURGH INC ↗
- Who funds INDIANA COUNTY YMCA (5647) ↗
- Who funds AMACHI PITTSBURGH INC ↗
- Who funds GENEVA COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds RADIANT HALL STUDIOS ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE DIOCESE OF PGH ↗
- Who funds WATER STREET MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds ANCHORPOINT COUNSELING MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds LITERACY COUNCIL OF SOUTHWESTERN PA ↗
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 Pittsburgh Foundation · Hillman Family Foundations · The United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania · Eqt Foundation · Richard King Mellon Foundation · The Grable Foundation · The Heinz Endowments · The Jack Buncher Foundation · McKinney Charitable Foundation · Snee-Reinhardt Charitable Foundation · Howard & Nell E Miller Foundat · Aj and Sigismunda Palumbo 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 Brooks 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.
- Chesapeake Shakespeare Company — 16% of income from government
- Hippodrome Foundation Inc — 4% of income from government
- Students 2 Science Inc — 1% of income from government
- National Aquarium Inc — 1% of income from government
- Adoptions Together Inc Dba As Paths for Families — 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.