· Private foundation
Foster Charitable Trust
Its FY2025 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k27 grants · $63k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $92k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED JEWISH FEDERATION - JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PITTSBURGH | $50,000 |
| ROCHESTER CONTEMPORARY ART CTR | $26,500 |
| UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH | $25,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $20,000 |
| PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST | $10,000 |
| JEWISH CEMETERY & BURIAL ASSOCIATION OF GREATER PITTSBURGH | $10,000 |
| TEMPLE JEREMIAH | $7,600 |
| RAVINA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| THE STANFORD FUND FOR UNDERGRADUATE | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO PSYCHOANALYTIC INSTITUTE | $5,000 |
| TEAM RUBICON | $5,000 |
| WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN | $5,000 |
| UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL | $5,000 |
| PITTSBURGH GLASS CENTER | $3,000 |
| TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $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 (FY21–21, $10k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +36% since the first grant, against +35% for the ones you funded once.
34 repeat relationships — 23 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 9 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, 71% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $60k 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
- TATHE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO3× · 2021–2023 · $55k · revenue +43%
- PCPITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST5× · 2021–2025 · $50k · revenue +66%
- RCROCHESTER CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER INC5× · 2021–2025 · $32k · revenue +58%
Funded once
- JAJEWISH ASSOCIATION ON AGINGone grant, 2021 · $5k · revenue -34%
- BTBeit T'Shuvahgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $5k · revenue +62%
- TFTHE FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE OF PITTSBURGH INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $4k · revenue +113%
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 mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
The adler planetarium ('adler') is a not-for-profit cultural institution whose mission is to connect people to the universe and each other under the sky we all share. it aspires to be the world's premier center for engaging in astronomy…
The museum's mission statement is: "to discover, interpret, and disseminate - through scientific research and education - knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe."
See schedule osfmoma believes the art of our time is vital and shares it with passion and purpose, and that art and the creative process can open minds and help build a better world. for that reason, we assemble unparalleled collections,…
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
The philadelphia museum of art - in partnership with the city, the region, and art museums around the globe - seeks to preserve, enhance, interpret, and extend the reach of its great collection in particular, and the visual arts in…
The museum of the city of new york fosters understanding of the distinctive nature of urban life in the world's most influential metropolis. it engages visitors by celebrating, documenting, and interpreting the city's past, present, and…
The phillips collection is the oldest museum of modern and contemporary art in the u.s. in addition to presentation of works from the permanent collection and special exhibitions, the museum maintains active educational, academic,…
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
The contemporary jewish museum (the cjm) makes the diversity of the jewish experience relevant for a twenty-first-century audience through innovative exhibitions and programs that educate, challenge, and inspire.
The Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration, and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, programs, digital resources, and special events, the Museum connects people to Chicago's history…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Chicago Horticultural Society and the most unlike its peers is The Mars Family Charitable 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 42 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
41 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. 41 of the 58 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 MARS FAMILY CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST ↗
- Who funds ROCHESTER CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds JEWISH CEMETERY & BURIAL ASSOC OF GR PGH ↗
- Who funds JEWISH UNITED FUND OF METROPOLITAN CHICAGO ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO PSYCHOANALYTIC INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds RAVINIA FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds SHADY SIDE ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds PITTSBURGH GLASS CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE UNITED WAY OF SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds Summit Land Conservancy ↗
- Who funds JEWISH ASSOCIATION ON AGING ↗
- Who funds TEAM RUBICON INC ↗
- Who funds Beit T'Shuvah ↗
- Who funds STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN INC ↗
- Who funds THE FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE OF PITTSBURGH INC ↗
- Who funds The Northmoor Education Foundation ↗
- Who funds PARKS FOUNDATION OF HIGHLAND PARK ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds Highland Park Community Foundation ↗
- Who funds OPEN BOOKS LTD ↗
- Who funds WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART ↗
- Who funds University of Chicago ↗
- Who funds Museum of Modern Art ↗
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: Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago · The Chicago Community Trust · Highland Park Community Foundation · Giant Eagle Foundation · AbbVie Foundation · National Philanthropic Trust · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Network for Good
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 Foster Charitable Trust 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Foster Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Foster Charitable Trust 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.