· Community foundation
Community Foundation of Lorain County
The community foundation responds to the changing needs of the community by making grants to local nonprofit organizations, awarding scholarships to help local students, working together with donors to build community endowment and providing leadership on key community issues.
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 141 grants below total $4,587,939 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $5,480,724 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $892,785 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 $10k30 grants · $218k
- $10k–50k82 grants · $2.0M
- $50k–250k29 grants · $2.3M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| COMMON GROUND-THE CINDY NORD CENTER FOR RENEWAL | $209,703 |
| SECOND HARVEST FOOD BANK OF NORTH CENTRAL OHIO | $143,549 |
| NATIVITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY PARISH | $135,000 |
| NEIGHBORHOOD ALLIANCE | $124,762 |
| THE SALVATION ARMY ELYRIA | $113,853 |
| LORAIN CIVIC CENTER COMMITTEE | $112,722 |
| LORAIN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $102,766 |
| BLESSING HOUSE | $95,982 |
| LORAIN COUNTY FREE CLINIC INC | $78,716 |
| EL CENTRO DE SERVICIOS SOCIALES INC | $78,518 |
| LUCY IDOL CENTER INC | $76,129 |
| MERCY HEALTH FOUNDATION OF LORAIN COUNTY | $70,643 |
| MAIN STREET VERMILION | $69,785 |
| NORD MENTAL HEALTH CENTER (RIVEON MENTAL HEALTH AND RECOVERY) | $67,615 |
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES CORPORATION | $67,000 |
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, $4.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 23% 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 +46% since the first grant, against +12% for the ones you funded once.
172 repeat relationships — 126 still active in FY2024, 46 since wound down; 11 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, 97% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $154k 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
- BSBon Secours Mercy Health Foundation8× · 2017–2024 · $3.2M · revenue +208%
- CGCOMMON GROUND THE CINDY NORD CENTER FOR RENEWAL8× · 2017–2024 · $1.7M · revenue +11% · 31% of their budget
- SHSECOND HARVEST FOODBANK OF NORTH CENTRAL OHIO8× · 2017–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +94%
Funded once
- KLKEYSTONE LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICTone grant, 2018 · $57k
- UHUNIVERSITY HOSPITALS HEALTH SYSTEM INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $54k · revenue +36%
- SISLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE INCgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $50k · revenue +331%
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.
Literary Cleveland assists writers and readers at all stages of development, promotes new and existing literature of the highest quality, and advances Northeast Ohio as a vital center of diverse voices and visions.
Greater cleveland volunteers enriches the community and indivuduals through volunteer service. volunteers age 18 and older are recruited and placed in the agency's programs or referred to local nonprofit or public organizations to help…
Empowering and strengthening ohio's people (esop) helps adults in all stages of life achieve and maintain financial wellness and housing stability.
Helping individuals live with dignity through the final stage of life.
The Central Ohio Worker Center is a non-profit organization that educates, empowers, and advocates for and with low-wage and immigrant workers in Central Ohio.
See schedule oto create a better world by serving people in need by operating food pantries, homeless shelters, a domestic violence shelter, affordable housing communities, senior living, assisted living and skilled care facilities, a home…
Align the life sciences ecosystem in the state of ohio, building collaborative partnerships, and advocating for policies and funding that will help to accelerate life science priorities and drive sustainable economic growth.
To strengthen the capacity of United Ways across Ohio and to advance the common good for Ohioans.
The orrville united way improves lives by unitiing people and resources to advance the common good in orrville, dalton and marshallville in eastern wayne county ohio. our goal is to create long-lasting changes that prevent future problems…
Ohio hills health services is a non-profit health care operation, organized by communities in eastern ohio to promote healthy lifestyles and to provide preventative and comprehensive medical and dental care for area residents. the primary…
The ohio district 5 area agency on aging, inc. provides leadership, collaboration, coordination and services to older adults, people with disabilities, their caregivers and resource networks that support individual choice, independence and…
United Way improves lives by uniting the caring power of our community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lorain County Historical Society Inc and the most unlike its peers is Black River Education and Wellness Foundation. 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 34 years old; the field is 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 5% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
157 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. 157 of the 235 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 Bon Secours Mercy Health Foundation ↗
- Who funds COMMON GROUND THE CINDY NORD CENTER FOR RENEWAL ↗
- Who funds SECOND HARVEST FOODBANK OF NORTH CENTRAL OHIO ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds BLESSING HOUSE ↗
- Who funds Lorain Civic Center Committee Inc ↗
- Who funds LORAIN COUNTY FREE CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds EL CENTRO DE SERVICIOS SOCIALES INC ↗
- Who funds LORAIN COUNTY SAFE HARBOR CORP ↗
- Who funds GIRL SCOUTS OF NORTH EAST OHIO ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF LORAIN COUNTY ↗
- Who funds LORAIN COUNTY ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds LORAIN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds PATRICIA LINDLEY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds OBERLIN HISTORICAL AND IMPROVEMENT ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds FUND FOR OUR ECONOMIC FUTURE OF NORTHEAST OHIO ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERSBIG SISTERS OF LORAIN COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THE ROAD TO HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds SAVE OUR CHILDREN OF ELYRIA ↗
- Who funds LORAIN COUNTY URBAN LEAGUE INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL INVENTORS HALL OF FAME INC ↗
- Who funds FAMILY PLANNING SERVICES OF LORAIN COUNTY ↗
- Who funds THE DOLLYWOOD FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE NORD FAMILY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds LORAIN COUNTY OFFICE ON AGING ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS OF NORTHEAST OHIO ↗
- Who funds LORAIN COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds OBERLIN COMMUNITY SERVICES COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds RIVEON MENTAL HEALTH AND RECOVERY ↗
- Who funds LEADERSHIP LORAIN COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF ELYRIA OH ↗
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: The Nord Family Foundation · The Nordson Corporation Foundation · The Stocker Foundation · Community West Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · The Cleveland Foundation · The George Gund Foundation · United Way of Greater Lorain County Inc · The Reinberger Foundation · Northwest Charitable Foundation · Lakeland Community Foundation · Miraldi Family Pvt Fdn
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 Community Foundation of Lorain County 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.