· Community foundation
Fairfield County Foundation
Building a legacy through philanthropy and stewardship to strengthen our community.
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 69 grants below total $3,015,855 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $4,225,235 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $1,209,380 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 $10k17 grants · $125k
- $10k–50k44 grants · $957k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $559k
- $250k+3 grants · $1.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| FAIRFIELD COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIE | $600,000 |
| GAMETIME | $495,535 |
| LANCASTER FESTIVAL | $279,000 |
| FAIRHOPE HOSPICE PALLIATIVE CARE | $225,000 |
| THE TREE CHURCH | $119,000 |
| NEW HORIZONS FOUNDATION INC | $101,000 |
| FAIRFIELD COUNTY FOUNDATION | $63,800 |
| DECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO | $50,000 |
| ALUMNI ASSOC AMANDA CLEARCREEK HS | $41,475 |
| FAIRFIELD AREA HUMANE SOCIETY | $40,110 |
| BALTIMORE AREA MUSEUM CORP | $37,400 |
| MAYWOOD MISSION | $35,960 |
| CRISIS RELIEF AND RECOVERY | $35,000 |
| HARCUM HOUSE | $33,054 |
| YMCA OF LANCASTER & FAIRFIELD COUNT | $33,000 |
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, $1.4M) land where the poverty rate runs at 9%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 7% 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.
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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 6% of Fairfield County 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, 94% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 88% — 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 +37% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
73 repeat relationships — 41 still active in FY2024, 32 since wound down; 25 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, 47% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.5M 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
- LFLANCASTER FESTIVAL INC8× · 2017–2024 · $1.6M · revenue +57% · 87% of their budget
- DADECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO8× · 2017–2024 · $619k · revenue +60% · 26% of their budget
- MOMeals on Wheels Older Adult Alternatives of8× · 2017–2024 · $272k · revenue +110%
Funded once
- SPST PETER'S LUTHERAN CHURCHone grant, 2017 · $443k
- LCLANCASTER CITY SCHOOLSone grant, 2019 · $129k
- DRDWA RECREATION INCone grant, 2019 · $115k
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.
Support and various other services. the fairfield county council appoints the members of the council's board of directors, which is the council's governing authority. accordingly, the council is considered to be a component unit of the…
To provide a warm and welcoming residence for people at the end of life which provides professional and compassionate care in a place to spend meaningful time with loved ones.
To 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 health care…
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…
The franklinton development association is a community development coporation formed to lead the revitalization of the franklinton neighborhhood of columubs ohio through the creation of affordable housing and commercial development for…
Distribution of food to those in need.
Helping individuals live with dignity through the final stage of life.
The community shelter board is ending homelessness by creating collaborations, innovating solutions, and investing in quality programs.
To provide treatment and prevention of substance abuse and related mental health problems for the residents of columbiana county and surrounding counties.
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…
To promote independence, wellness and community for older adults in an active and friendly continuing-care environment.
Fairmount homes is a ministry with mature adults, providing high quality services, promoting wholeness and creative living consistent with christ-centered mennonite values.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Fairfield County and the most unlike its peers is K9SENSUS 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 25 years old; the field is 20. 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 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 3% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
83 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. 83 of the 184 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 LANCASTER FESTIVAL INC ↗
- Who funds FAIRFIELD COUNTY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO ↗
- Who funds FAIRFIELD COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds Meals on Wheels Older Adult Alternatives of ↗
- Who funds THE FAMILY YMCA OF LANCASTER & FAIRFIELD COUNTY ↗
- Who funds FAIRHOPE HOSPICE & PALLIATIVE CARE INC ↗
- Who funds FAIRFIELD AREA HUMANE SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds FAIRFIELD MEDICAL CENTER FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF FAIRFIELD COUNTY ↗
- Who funds FAIRFIELD COUNTY HERITAGE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM COMMISSION OF THE LANCASTER-FAIRFIELD COUNTY AREA INC ↗
- Who funds MAYWOOD MISSION ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF SOUTHEASTERN OHIO ↗
- Who funds FAIRFIELD COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER ↗
- Who funds AHA A HANDS ON ADVENTURE A CHILDRENS MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF SE OHIO ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE LANCASTER PARKS AND RECREATION ↗
- Who funds FAIRFIELD CENTER FOR INDEPENDENCE INC ↗
- Who funds ALL ACCESSIBLE SPORTS COMPLEX AND PARK INC ↗
- Who funds GENEVA HILLS GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds DESTINATION DOWNTOWN LANCASTER INC ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds NEW HORIZONS MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds The New Horizons Foundation Inc ↗
- Who funds PROARTEOHIO VOCAL ENSEMBLE ↗
- Who funds Lancaster Fairfield County Newsies 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: South Central Power Company Foundation · United Way of Fairfield County · Park National Corporation Foundation · Don & Jo Ann Bainter Fdn Tr · Columbus Foundation · Fox Foundation Inc · Peoples Bank Foundation · Ingram-White Castle Foundation · L Brands Foundation · Harry C Moores Foundation · Meals on Wheels Older Adult Alternatives of · Kelley Family 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 Fairfield County 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.
- Wounded Warrior Project 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.