· Private foundation
Bruce a Fortier Charitable Trust
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
78% of Bruce a Fortier Charitable Trust’s FY2025 grant dollars went to Defiance Area Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2025 names 3 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2023, the last year Bruce a Fortier Charitable Trust named its own grantees at scale: 5 organizations, $448k. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2022–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under $10k8 grants · $23k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $425k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| WILDCAT YOUTH 32 ATHLETICS | $225,000 |
| LIFEWISE | $200,000 |
| GOOD SAMARITAN SCHOOL | $7,238 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| RAVENS CARE | $3,750 |
| NATIONWIDE CHILDREN'S OF TOLEDO | $2,370 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $2,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $1,068 |
| WOLFPACK WRESTLING CLUB LLC | $1,000 |
| BLACK SWAMP ARTS COUNCIL | $900 |
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 (FY22–25, $18k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 +503% since the first grant, against -27% for the ones you funded once.
6 repeat relationships — 5 still active in FY2023, 1 since wound down; 11 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call). Read against FY2023, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- LILIFEWISE INC4× · 2022–2025 · $445k · revenue +503%
- FPFIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH3× · 2023–2025 · $23k
- IGIndividual grant recipient3× · 2022–2024 · $15k
Funded once
- CLCHILDRENS LANTERN INCone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue -27%
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.
Building a stronger community for our children
Social welfare organization
Provide care, housing and training to displaced and disadvantaged children
Collection and distribuion of funds to non-profit agencies in franklin county area
Community fire safety
Collect & distribute funds to approved agencies in monroe county alabama
Welfare and care of animals
Provide intervention and education for vulnerable youthand young adults
To promote business development within lawrence county, illinois.
The purpose of the association shall be to encourage the members of the denville fire dept in the preservation and protection of life and property from and during such fires and emergencies as may occur in the township of denville and…
Provides funding to affiliated non-profit agencies in wythe county and the surrounding area.
To serve the town of ravenswood and surrounding areas for fire and rescue.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Defiance County Inc and the most unlike its peers is Black Swamp Arts Council. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 19 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.
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: Premier Bank Foundation · Amazonsmile Foundation
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 Bruce a Fortier Charitable Trust 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 Bruce a Fortier Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Bruce a Fortier Charitable Trust 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.