· Public charity
Buffalo Sabres Foundation
Stimulate, support and encourage organizations that serve western new york which are committed to youth hockey initiatives; the health, wellness and education of underprivileged / disadvantaged youth and military personnel; and physically and mentally challenged athletes, by providing financial generosity and other platforms for their…
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 34 grants below total $1,042,099 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,252,405 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $210,306 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 $10k9 grants · $74k
- $10k–50k20 grants · $294k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $341k
- $250k+1 grant · $333k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| BUFFALO JUNIOR SABRES | $333,333 |
| RESOURCE COUNCIL OF WNY INC | $129,500 |
| ROSWELL PARK ALLIANCE FOUNDATION | $101,751 |
| FANTHEM FOUNDATION INC | $60,035 |
| MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATES OF WNY | $50,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $28,729 |
| BUFFALO SABRES SLED HOCKEY TEAM | $20,000 |
| WESTERN NEW YORK SPECIAL HOCKEY ASSOCIATION | $20,000 |
| HASEK'S HEROES | $20,000 |
| SABAH | $20,000 |
| BUFFALO WARRIORS HOCKEY | $20,000 |
| BUFFALO CITY MISSION | $20,000 |
| BUFFALO PREP | $16,000 |
| MIRACLE LEAGUE OF GRAND ISLAND AND WNY INC | $14,550 |
| EVERGREEN HEALTH SERVICES | $13,500 |
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 (FY17–24, $198k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, 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 +31% since the first grant, against +7% for the ones you funded once.
39 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2024, 19 since wound down; 13 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; $192k 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
- NFNIAGARA FRONTIER JUNIOR HOCKEY CLUB INC8× · 2017–2024 · $2.3M · revenue +6% · 29% of their budget
- RCResource Council of WNY Inc8× · 2017–2024 · $568k · revenue +242% · 37% of their budget
SAVING GRACE MINISTRIES INC3× · 2017–2023 · $191k · revenue +6%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $145k
- KHKALEIDA HEALTHgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $70k · revenue +47%
- ECERIE COUNTY MEDICAL CENTER CORPone grant, 2020 · $70k
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.
To advance the health of our community by providing care management and support to families experiencing physical, mental, or behavioral issues with their child. this is done by advancing innovative practices, by collaborating with…
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…
Central ny quest has been established to serve the needs of persons with intellectual, developmental and mental health disorders in the central new york region.
To provide children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported 1-to-1 relationships that change their lives for the better, forever. provides mentoring opportunities to more than 110 youth each year.
To assist the faculty of the department of pediatrics at the university at buffalo in the delivery of health care, improve the ability of the faculty to perform clinical research, maximize resources to foster academic, research and…
To provide quality, affordable child care for the families of students, faculty and staff of the college, as well as families of other new york state employees and community members.
Establish a unified voice for children and youth with emotional, behavioral, and social challenges. the organizational mission is to ensure that every family has access to needed information, support, and services.
To attract new employers to the buffalo niagara region through outreach to growing companies around the world. to support business attraction, expansion and entrepreneurship, invest buffalo niagara collaborates with local businesses,…
Erie homes for children and adults operates as a private, non-profit agency providing programs for individuals with intellectual and physical disabilities.
To support and advocate for health care, research, education and therapeutic recreation for children with special needs.
We are western new york's community based healthcare organization dedicated to the care and support of individuals with a serious or end of life illness. we represent a passionate and diverse team of professionals dedicated to the holistic…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hospice Foundation of Wny Inc and the most unlike its peers is Buffalo Sabres Alumni Association. 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 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% 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.
95 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. 95 of the 115 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 NIAGARA FRONTIER JUNIOR HOCKEY CLUB INC ↗
- Who funds Resource Council of WNY Inc ↗
- Who funds ROSWELL PARK ALLIANCE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR GREATER BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds FANTHEM FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds EXPLORE & MORE A CHILDREN'S MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds SAVING GRACE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds DOMINIK HASEK YOUTH HOCKEY LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds KEVIN GUEST HOUSE INC ↗
- Who funds SKATING ASSOCIATION FOR THE BLIND & HAND ↗
- Who funds WESTERN NEW YORK PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED YOUTH SPORTS ORGAN INC ↗
- Who funds EIGHT DAYS OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds KALEIDA HEALTH ↗
- Who funds CITY MISSION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Greater Buffalo Adaptive Sports Inc ↗
- Who funds HISPANIC HERITAGE COUNCIL OF WESTERN NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION OF ERIE COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF BUFFALO AND ERIE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds FEEDMORE WESTERN NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds TEACH MY KID TO READ INC ↗
- Who funds HOUGHTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds Best Buddies International Inc ↗
- Who funds EHS INC ↗
- Who funds The Boys & Girls Club Of The Northtowns Inc ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO FIRE DEPARTMENT BENEFICIARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO GO GREEN INC ↗
- Who funds WNY HEROES INC ↗
- Who funds MAKE LEMON AIDE INC ↗
- Who funds Niagara Pride Inc ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds PLAYWORKS EDUCATION ENERGIZED ↗
- Who funds GIGI'S PLAYHOUSE 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 · Buffalo Bills Foundation Inc · First Niagara Foundation · The John R Oishei Foundation · The Western New York Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · The Peter and Elizabeth C Tower Foundation · United Way of Buffalo and Erie County · Children's Foundation of Erie County Inc · Mother Cabrini Health Foundation Inc · James H Cummings Foundation Inc · Cullen 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 Buffalo Sabres 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.
- City Year Inc — 11% of income from government
- Best Buddies International Inc — 4% 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 Sabres Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Buffalo Sabres Foundation 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.