· Public charity
Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Library System
Ccls is a 36 member cooperative public library system chartered by the nys education department to foster, strengthen, and improve public library services within chautauqua and cattaraugus counties by providing its members with training, acquisition, and processing.
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 36 grants below total $503,753 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $577,611 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $73,858 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 $10k26 grants · $176k
- $10k–50k8 grants · $131k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $197k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| JAMES PRENDERGAST LIBRARY | $123,683 |
| OLEAN PUBLIC LIBRARY | $72,851 |
| RANDOLPH FREE LIBRARY | $26,899 |
| BLOUNT LIBRARY | $26,037 |
| ELLINGTON FARMAN LIBRARY | $15,965 |
| GOWANDA FREE LIBRARY | $15,791 |
| DUNKIRK PUBLIC LIBRARY | $12,588 |
| LAKEWOOD MEMORIAL LIBRARY | $12,230 |
| AHIRA HALL MEMORIAL LIBRARY | $11,061 |
| DARWIN R BARKER LIBRARY | $10,470 |
| PORTVILLE FREE LIBRARY | $9,270 |
| FLUVANNA FREE LIBRARY | $8,719 |
| KENNEDY FREE LIBRARY | $8,521 |
| KING MEMORIAL LIBRARY | $8,218 |
| PATTERSON LIBRARY | $7,980 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–24) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, against an area that typically sits at 15%. 100% of your 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.
36 repeat relationships — 36 still active in FY2024, 0 since wound down.
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
- OPOLEAN PUBLIC LIBRARY8× · 2017–2024 · $727k · revenue +13%
- DRDARWIN R BARKER LIBRARY8× · 2017–2024 · $92k · revenue +418%
- PLPATTERSON LIBRARY8× · 2017–2024 · $82k · revenue +102%
Funded once
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 provide library services to local area residents.
Monessen Public Library provides collection facilities and services to the people of the Monessen community, which assists them in fulfilling their need for information, research sources, and cultural enrichment.
The Quechee Library serves as a public library and freely provides access and materials for information, lifelong learning, entertainment, and reflection, as well as programs to foster community and engagement.
Public Library providing books and computer network to the public
The tupper lake library is a source of information for the public
public library
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Delevan-Yorkshire Public Library and the most unlike its peers is Chautauqua Institution. 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 58 years old; the field is 28. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 15% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 5% 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.
25 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. 25 of the 36 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 JAMES PRENDERGAST LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds OLEAN PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds DARWIN R BARKER LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds PATTERSON LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds LAKEWOOD MEMORIAL LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds BLOUNT LIBRARY INC ↗
- Who funds MEMORIAL LIBRARY OF LITTLE VALLEY ↗
- Who funds ANDERSON LEE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds Mary E Seymour Memorial Free Library ↗
- Who funds CHAUTAUQUA INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds PORTVILLE FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds GOWANDA FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds SINCLAIRVILLE FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds ASHVILLE FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds ELLICOTTVILLE MEMORIAL LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds MAYVILLE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds Clymer-French Creek Library ↗
- Who funds DELEVAN-YORKSHIRE PUBLIC LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds FLUVANNA FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds KENNEDY FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds CATTARAUGUS FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds MYERS MEMORIAL LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds BEMUS POINT FREE LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds Minerva Free Library ↗
- Who funds Alexander Findley Community Library ↗
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: Chautauqua Region Community Foundation Inc · Reginald a & Elizabeth S Lenna Fdn Inc Dba Lenna Foundation · Ralph C Sheldon Foundation Inc · Carnahan-Jackson Foundation · John Henry Eldred Jr 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 Chautauqua-Cattaraugus Library System 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.