· Private foundation
Firstenergy Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
Read this first · the figures below need context
76% of Firstenergy Foundation’s FY2024 grant dollars went to American Online Giving Foundation Inc, not to grantees.
Its money now reaches organizations through that sponsor, which does not report who recommended each grant. FY2024 names 132 organizations directly, so a portfolio cannot be read from it. Everything below is therefore FY2022, the last year Firstenergy Foundation named its own grantees at scale: 816 organizations, $9M. It is dated, not current.
Organizations named directly on the return
Amber years are those where most dollars went to a sponsor.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k926 grants · $2.3M
- $10k–50k219 grants · $3.8M
- $50k–250k34 grants · $2.7M
- $250k+2 grants · $518k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED WAY OF SUMMIT AND MEDINA | $267,684 |
| AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION INC | $250,000 |
| THE UNITED WAY OF SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA | $193,809 |
| AKRON CANTON REGIONAL FOODBANK | $150,000 |
| HACKENSACK MERIDIAN HEALTH FOUNDATION INC | $125,000 |
| METROHEALTH FOUNDATION INC | $125,000 |
| ALVERNIA UNIVERSITY | $125,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF BERKS COUNTY | $100,309 |
| NORTHERN OHIO GOLF CHARITIES FOUNDATION INC | $100,000 |
| CUYAHOGA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATI | $100,000 |
| WESTERN RESERVE LAND CONSERVANCY | $100,000 |
| AKRON CHILDRENS HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC | $100,000 |
| TECH CORPS | $100,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF GREATER CLEVELAND FUND | $85,678 |
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 (FY22–24, $1.1M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 67% 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.
231 repeat relationships — 223 still active in FY2022, 8 since wound down; 728 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (too recent to call). Read against FY2022, the last year this funder named its own grantees directly; its giving has since run through a sponsor, which reports no donor behind each grant.
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, 91% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $148k 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
- AHAmerican Heart Association Inc4× · 2020–2024 · $589k · revenue +53%
- NONORTHERN OHIO GOLF CHARITIES FOUNDATION INC4× · 2020–2024 · $400k · revenue +118%
- TMTHE METROHEALTH FOUNDATION INC2× · 2020–2022 · $272k · revenue +8%
Funded once
- UWUNITED WAY - SUMMIT AND FOUNDATION GRANTone grant, 2021 · $307k
- AHAMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION GRANTone grant, 2021 · $304k
- SHSUMMA HEALTHone grant, 2020 · $295k
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.
Connect resources to important community needs. the organization focuses on the most important human service needs facing the community and uses a variety of methods to communicate with community members in order to priortize the issues…
Organization is dedicated to raising funds for programs that meet the human care needs of the people of cumberland county.
To maximize the development and utilization of the human and economic resources of the wayne county georgraphical area in order to create or preserve jobs and employment opportunities and improve the welfare of people of the area.
United way of wilkes county is dedicated to improving the lives of our citizens by underwriting identified programs that enhance their well-being through our 21 partner agencies. the united way of wilkes county annually impacts over 32,000…
Uniting our community to empower individuals and families to thrive.
To provide leadership in our communities to 1) identify our most pressing human care needs, 2) to work together to direct the time, energy and resources towards addressing those needs to improve our quality of life.
The business council of westchester's mission is to work hard to grow the economy, create jobs and build a strong business community in westchester county.
United way's mission is to improve lives.
To improve the quality of life of the people of lackawanna, wayne and pike counties and surrounding communities by serving as a catalyst for community problem solving and by conducting an efficient, encompassing volunteer fundraising…
United way of westchester and putnam mobilizes strategic partnerships and leverages resources to create a more equitable community by advancing education, financial stability, and health initiatives.
All of the expenses of the cww are for the purpose of improving local government and administration through cooperative efforts. all services are provided to various communities in western wayne county, michigan.
The specific mission of the organization is to coordinate resources to inspire and empower people to acheive their full potential.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Monmouth and Ocean Counties and the most unlike its peers is Longwood Gardens Inc. 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 36 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.4% 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.
924 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. 924 of the 1,345 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 AMERICAN ONLINE GIVING FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF SUMMIT AND MEDINA ↗
- Who funds American Heart Association Inc ↗
- Who funds THE UNITED WAY OF SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds NORTHERN OHIO GOLF CHARITIES FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF BERKS COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds LOCAL INITIATIVES SUPPORT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF GREATER CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds THE METROHEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AKRON CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AKRON-CANTON REGIONAL FOODBANK ↗
- Who funds American National Red Cross & Its Constituent Chapters and Branches ↗
- Who funds TYGART VALLEY UNITED WAY INC ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF MONONGALIA AND PRESTON COUNITES INC ↗
- Who funds ALVERNIA UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds CHOOSE NEW JERSEY INC ↗
- Who funds United Way of Greater Stark County ↗
- Who funds CUYAHOGA VALLEY PRESERVATION AND SCENIC RAILWAY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CUYAHOGA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds AKRON CHILDRENS MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds EMPOWER THE VILLAGE INC ↗
- Who funds WESTERN RESERVE LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds TECH CORPS OHIO ↗
- Who funds Baldwin Wallace University ↗
- Who funds United Way of Erie County ↗
- Who funds READING HOSPITAL 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: United Way of Summit and Medina · The Westfield Insurance Foundation · The Welty Family Foundation · Akron Community Foundation · Burton D Morgan Foundation Inc · Synthomer Foundation Inc · Northern Ohio Golf Charities Foundation Inc · The United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania · Charles E and Mabel M Ritchie Memorial · Sisler McFawn Foundation Pfdn · Northwest Charitable Foundation · Premier Bank 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 Firstenergy 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.
- Life and Discovery Inc — 100% of income from government
- Allegany County Human Resources Development Commission Inc — 28% of income from government
- Mercy Center Corporation — 21% of income from government
- Family Promise of Morris County Inc — 17% of income from government
- Paper Mill Playhouse — 9% of income from government
- Shore Clubhouse Inc — 7% of income from government
- Homeless Solutions Inc — 6% of income from government
- Lunch Break Inc — 4% of income from government
- Cornerstone Family Programs — 3% of income from government
- United Way of Northern New Jersey 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 Firstenergy Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Firstenergy 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.