· Private foundation
Buffalo Bills Foundation Inc
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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k125 grants · $347k
- $10k–50k17 grants · $266k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.0M
- $250k+1 grant · $296k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED WAY OF BUFFALO & ERIE COUNTY | $295,634 |
| CONNECTING COMMUNITIES IN ACTION INC | $165,000 |
| BUFFALO PREP | $105,000 |
| HARVEST HOUSE BUFFALO INC | $100,000 |
| BUFFALO GO GREEN | $100,000 |
| CORNELL COOPERATIVE EXTENSION OF ERIE COUNTY | $93,564 |
| PROVIDENCE FARM COLLECTIVE | $80,000 |
| POLICE ATHLETIC LEAGUE OF BUFFALO INC | $75,000 |
| SHARE OUR STRENGTHNO KID HUNGRY | $50,800 |
| MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE PROJECT INC | $50,000 |
| WESTERN NEW YORK AMATEUR FOOTBALL ALLIANCE | $50,000 |
| RESOURCE COUNCIL OF WNY | $50,000 |
| SHARE OUR STRENGTHNO KID HUNGRY | $50,000 |
| FANTHEM FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| ST SUSAN CENTER INC | $39,520 |
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 (FY20–24, $432k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 11% of Buffalo Bills Foundation Inc’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 85% of the giving stays in NY; read by stated purpose it is 90% — more of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +22% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
76 repeat relationships — 47 still active in FY2024, 29 since wound down; 51 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, 66% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $656k 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
- BGBUFFALO GO GREEN INC4× · 2021–2024 · $656k · revenue +372% · 25% of their budget
PROVIDENCE FARM COLLECTIVE CORP4× · 2021–2024 · $263k · revenue +164%
BUFFALO PREP INC3× · 2021–2024 · $200k · revenue +49%
Funded once
- NCNATIONAL COMPASSION FUNDone grant, 2022 · $544k
- FWFEEDMORE WNY FOUNDATION INCone grant, 2022 · $99k · revenue -60%
- CCCORNELL COOPERATIVE EXTENSIONone grant, 2023 · $91k
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.
The legal aid bureau of buffalo, inc., a not-for-profit organization, provides legal representation to financially needy men, women and children in western new york. through its skilled staff, the legal aid bureau seeks equal justice for…
Respond to economic, social, educational, and cultural needs of hispanic/latinos in western new york through bilingual, bicultural services that promote self-sufficiency and improve quality of life.
The organization provides charitable relief in the form of emergency shelter, material needs, and compassionate care for the homeless and persons in need in the eastern niagara county, new york area.
Invest buffalo niagara foundation, inc. is a vehicle to solicit charitable contributions to develop programs, collaborate with, and provide funding to organizations that advance and encourage economic development in western new york.
To provide a safe, adequate supply of voluntarily donated blood for patients seeking medical services in northwestern pennsylvania and western new york hospitals.
To acquire and renovate real property in western new york to establish and maintain facilities for the temporary and permanent housing of needy veterans and other special needs individuals.
To acquire, remediate, and steward lands along wny's waterfronts prioritizing public access.
The community health center of buffalo, inc operates four freestanding federally qualified health centers licensed as a diagnostic and treatment center under article 28 of the ny state health law. the center provides a broad range of…
RAWNY is dedicated to serving our community by supporting the men and women who have experienced incarceration, and the agencies that serve them, to ensure anyone reentering has access to needed resources and support.
Food bank of central new york is a not-for-profit organization: our mission is to lead the effort to eliminate hunger in our region, through partnerships with others in our community, through education, advocacy, and distribution of…
We welcome all western new yorkers for high quality, patient-centered primary healthcare.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hospice Foundation of Wny Inc and the most unlike its peers is Sophia the Fierce 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 21 years old; the field is 21. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 8% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.5% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
175 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 175 of the 347 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 COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR GREATER BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO GO GREEN INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF BUFFALO AND ERIE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds ECMC FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds PROVIDENCE FARM COLLECTIVE CORP ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO PREP INC ↗
- Who funds FANTHEM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds POLICE ATHLETIC LEAGUE OF BUFFALO ↗
- Who funds SHARE OUR STRENGTH ↗
- Who funds HARVEST HOUSE BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds FEEDMORE WNY FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FIELD & FORK NETWORK ↗
- Who funds Resource Council of WNY Inc ↗
- Who funds African Heritage Economic Initiative ↗
- Who funds BACK TO BASICS OUTREACH MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds The Rural Outreach Center Inc ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Avenue Project Inc ↗
- Who funds EIGHT DAYS OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds INDEPENDENT HEALTH FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds EXPLORE & MORE A CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO - NIAGARA HONOR FLIGHT INC ↗
- Who funds EDWARD CHARLES FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ST SUSAN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF EAST AURORA INC ↗
- Who funds Classroom Champions Inc ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF NIGHT PEOPLE INC ↗
- Who funds NEUROFIBROMATOSIS INC NORTHEAST ↗
- Who funds PANCREATIC CANCER ACTION NETWORK INC ↗
- Who funds HUNTER'S HOPE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Fare Share Wny 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: Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Inc · The John R Oishei Foundation · The Western New York Foundation · United Way of Buffalo and Erie County · First Niagara Foundation · Rich Family Foundation · Buffalo Sabres Foundation · Cullen Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · The Frank G Raichle Foundation · James H Cummings Foundation Inc · Children's Foundation of Erie County 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 Buffalo Bills 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.
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% of income from government
- Classroom Champions Inc — 1% 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Buffalo Bills Foundation Inc?
Find your warmest path to Buffalo Bills 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.