· Private foundation
ELSIE P AND LUCIUS B McCOWAN PRIVATE FOUNDATION
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 FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k100 grants · $170k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $52k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| OUTDOOR U INC | $21,350 |
| BAPTIST HEALTH FOUNDATION | $10,400 |
| IROQUOIS YOUTH SPORTSMANS FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR SUNY | $10,000 |
| AMERICAN LEGION POST 113 | $6,000 |
| CANISIUS UNIVERSITY | $6,000 |
| ST PAUL'S LUTHERAN CHURCH | $5,500 |
| CHILDRENS HOSPITAL OF BUFFALO FOUNDATION | $5,200 |
| WOMENS BOARD WOLFSON CHILDRENS HOSPITAL | $5,000 |
| JUST BUFFALO LITERARY CENTER | $5,000 |
| SISTERS OF ST MARY OF NAMUR | $4,500 |
| HISTORICAL ASSOC OF LEWISTON | $4,000 |
| EBENEEZER UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST | $3,500 |
| BUFFALO ZOO | $3,500 |
| ELMA CEMETERY ASSOCIATION | $3,000 |
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, $47k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
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.
149 repeat relationships — 91 still active in FY2024, 58 since wound down; 12 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $17k 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
- JBJUST BUFFALO LITERARY CENTER INC8× · 2017–2024 · $39k · revenue +22%
HEART LOVE & SOUL INC8× · 2017–2024 · $39k · revenue +53%- TCTHE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF BUFFALO FOUNDATION7× · 2018–2024 · $36k · revenue +163%
Funded once
- TFTHE FRANCISCAN HERITAGE FDNone grant, 2022 · $7k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $6k
- SPST PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCHone grant, 2017 · $5k
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.
Provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary, and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to global security.
The air & space forces association (afa) is a nonprofit, independent, professional military, and aerospace education association. the association's mission is to promote dominant u.s. air and space forces as the foundation of a strong…
American gas association's (the association) mission is to develop and advocate for informed, innovative, and durable policy that fulfills our nation's energy needs, environmental aspirations and economic potential. we are committed to…
American foreign service association (afsa) is both the principal advocate for the long-term institutional wellbeing of the professional career foreign service and responsible for safeguarding the interest of afsa members. (continued on…
To sustain, restore, and enhance the nation's fish, wildlife, plants, and habitats.
The npr foundation ("foundation") is organized and operated exclusively for the benefit of its sole supported organization, national public radio, inc. ("npr inc."). the foundation supports npr inc. through various activities such as…
See schedule onylcv is a non-partisan policy making and political action organization that works to make environmental protection a top priority with elected officials, decision-makers and the voters by evaluating incumbent performance and…
The fsmb serves as the voice for state medical boards, supporting them through education, assessment, research and advocacy while providing services and initiatives that promote patient safety, quality health care and regulatory best…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Jefferson national parks association provides quality educational products and related services that enhance public understanding and appreciation of america's national parks, public lands and historic places.
To support, promote, and advance the mission of the naval academy.
Empowering financial professionals and consumers through world-class advocacy and education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Heritage Foundation and the most unlike its peers is American Diabetes 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 38 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 10% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 2% lost their exemption, against 10% 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.
103 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. 103 of the 232 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 OUTDOOR U INC ↗
- Who funds JUST BUFFALO LITERARY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HEART LOVE & SOUL INC ↗
- Who funds THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF BUFFALO FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CANISIUS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds WINGS FLIGHTS OF HOPE ↗
- Who funds NIAGARA HOSPICE INC ↗
- Who funds SHAKESPEARE IN DELAWARE PARK INC ↗
- Who funds The Research Foundation for The State University of New York ↗
- Who funds LOCKPORT CARES INC ↗
- Who funds Jamison Road Volunteer Fire Co ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO FINE ARTS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN LEGION POST 0113 ↗
- Who funds CITY MISSION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OF LEWISTON ↗
- Who funds BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF ELMA MARILLA AND WALES INC ↗
- Who funds THE BISON CHILDREN'S SCHOLARSHIP FUND INC ↗
- Who funds ROSWELL PARK ALLIANCE 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: Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Inc · The Baird Foundation · The John R Oishei Foundation · Equitable Foundation Inc · Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies Inc · The Saperston Family Foundation · Joanne and Frank Collins Charitable Foundation · The Osc Charitable Foundation · East Hill Foundation · James H Cummings Foundation Inc · Tower Family Fund 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 ELSIE P AND LUCIUS B McCOWAN PRIVATE 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.
- Save the Children Federation Inc — 30% of income from government
- Beebe Medical Center Inc — 5% of income from government
- Wounded Warrior Project Inc — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America Inc — 0% 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.
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Find your warmest path to ELSIE P AND LUCIUS B McCOWAN PRIVATE 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.