· Public charity
Columbus Bar Foundation
The COLUMBUS BAR FOUNDATION is a 501(c)(3) organization and is classified as a 509(a)(1) and 170(b)(1)(a)(vi) public charity that, in partnership with the columbus bar association, is committed to promoting: access to justice by all citizens public education about the law and the judicial system innovation in the administration of…
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.
The 5 grants below total $181,711 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $187,461 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $5,750 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 · FY2025
- $10k–50k4 grants · $109k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $73k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OHIO JUSTICE FOUNDATION | $73,066 |
| COMMUNITY MEDIATION SERVICES OF CENTRAL OHIO | $37,500 |
| LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF METROPOLITAN COLUMBUS | $30,000 |
| LAW AND LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE | $28,000 |
| CAPITAL UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL | $13,145 |
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 (FY20–20, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 33% of Columbus Bar Foundation’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, 100% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 67% — less 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 +34% since the first grant, against +23% for the ones you funded once.
8 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2025, 5 since wound down; 2 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, 43% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $103k 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
- TLTHE LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF COLUMBUS7× · 2017–2023 · $1.1M · revenue +108%
- LALaw and Leadership Institute LLC9× · 2017–2025 · $382k · revenue +34%
- CMCommunity Mediation Services of Central Ohio9× · 2017–2025 · $313k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- PBPRO BONO PARTNERSHIP OF OHIOgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +42%
- AIALVIS INCone grant, 2020 · $10k · revenue +23%
THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $10k · 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.
The ohio state bar association (the "association") is an unincorporated voluntary non-profit organization. the association was formed to promote justice and advance the interests of the legal profession.
Toledo Legal Aid Society provides legal representation for indigent clients that are charged with criminal, traffic, or juvenile offenses for which the penalty or any possible adjudication includes the potential loss of liberty.
To resolve serious legal problems of low income people, to promote economic and family stability, and reduce poverty through effective legal assistance.
To promote professional excellence, foster justice, serve our members and educate the public.
Legal aid of western ohio, inc. (lawo) is a non-profit law firm that champions equity and justice through client-centered community collaboration and transformative legal advocacy.
The columbus bar foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization and is classified as a 509(a)(1) and 170(b)(1)(a)(vi) public charity that, in partnership with the columbus bar association, is committed to promoting: access to justice by all…
The mission of legal aid of southeast and central ohio (lasco) is to provide civil legal aid and advocacy to overcome unfairness and injustice to reduce poverty and increase opportunity. lasco offers free noncriminal legal help for people…
The mission of Ohio Crime Victim Justice Center (OCVJC) is to ensure that the constitutional and statutory rights of Ohio crime victims are protected and enforced in state and federal jurisdictions in all 88 Ohio counties. To fulfill this…
Provide comprehensive services that benefit the financial institution industry in ohio.
To create fair, intelligent, redemptive criminal justice systems through zealous client-centered advocacy, innovative policy reform and cross-sector community education.
See schedule o.legal aid's mission is to secure justice, equity and access to opportunity for and with people who have low incomes through passionate legal representation and advocacy for systematic change.
Advocates for basic legal equality, inc. (able) is a non-profit law firm that provides high quality legal assistance in civil matters to help eligible low-income individuals and groups in western ohio achieve self-reliance, and equal…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Columbus Bar Association and the most unlike its peers is League of Women Voters of Metro Columbus. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
14 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. 14 of the 17 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 THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF COLUMBUS ↗
- Who funds Law and Leadership Institute LLC ↗
- Who funds Community Mediation Services of Central Ohio ↗
- Who funds THE COLUMBUS BAR ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds OHIO LEGAL HELP ↗
- Who funds Ohio Access to Justice Foundation ↗
- Who funds League of Women Voters of Metro Columbus ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PRO BONO PARTNERSHIP OF OHIO ↗
- Who funds ALVIS INC ↗
- Who funds THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND INC ↗
- Who funds ATHLETIC CLUB OF COLUMBUS ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF CASA OF FRANKLIN COUNTY OHIO ↗
- Who funds TOLEDO BAR ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION ↗
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: L Brands Foundation · Columbus Foundation · Ohio State Bar Foundation · American Electric Power Foundation · Harry C Moores Foundation · Cardinal Health Foundation · The Dayton Foundation · Charities Aid Foundation America · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · 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 Columbus Bar 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.
- Third Sector New England Inc — 3% 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 Columbus Bar Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Columbus Bar 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.