· Community foundation
Foundation for Appalachian Ohio
The FOUNDATION FOR APPALACHIAN OHIO (fao) is a regional community foundation serving the 32 counties of appalachian ohio.
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 68 grants below total $2,026,043 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $6,596,626 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $4,570,583 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 $10k29 grants · $192k
- $10k–50k33 grants · $518k
- $50k–250k3 grants · $347k
- $250k+3 grants · $969k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ROSS COUNTY BOARD OF DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITI | $400,000 |
| FOCUSING PHILANTHROPY | $319,244 |
| HAVAR INC | $250,000 |
| COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLIN | $170,012 |
| HAVEN OF HOPE | $114,500 |
| ATHENS COUNTY FOOD PANTRY | $62,087 |
| OPEN ARMS PREGNANCY CENTER | $46,500 |
| HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF SOUTHEAST OHIO | $28,537 |
| ADAMS COUNTY TRAVEL AND VISITORS BUREAU | $25,000 |
| FUTURE PLANS | $22,000 |
| ADAMS COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY | $21,672 |
| STUART'S OPERA HOUSE | $21,267 |
| MEADOWBROOK MUSIC BOOSTERS | $20,000 |
| THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF SPONSORED | $19,591 |
| ATHENS PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT | $18,191 |
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, $2.3M) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 97% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 17% of Foundation for Appalachian Ohio’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, 65% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 56% — 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 +43% since the first grant, against +27% for the ones you funded once.
62 repeat relationships — 22 still active in FY2024, 40 since wound down; 44 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, 38% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1.2M 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
- HOHAVEN OF HOPE INC8× · 2017–2024 · $677k · revenue +48%
- HIHAVAR INC2× · 2017–2024 · $396k · revenue +32%
- OAOPEN ARMS PREGNANCY CENTER4× · 2017–2024 · $161k · revenue +60%
Funded once
- VTVISION TO LEARNone grant, 2023 · $821k
- GCGUERNSEY COUNTY COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONone grant, 2023 · $337k
VISION TO LEARNgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $150k · revenue +88%
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 organization is a community based economic development entity serving the 32 counties of appalachia ohio. its mission is to build the capacity of appalachian communities to network, work together and innovate to create a dynamic…
To strengthen the capacity of United Ways across Ohio and to advance the common good for Ohioans.
Empowering and strengthening ohio's people (esop) helps adults in all stages of life achieve and maintain financial wellness and housing stability.
Organized for the purpose of creating, developing and effecting programs and projects designed to enhance the economic development of Allen, Auglaize, and Mercer Counties and its citizens, particularly to those areas of the community and…
Provide training to the ohio community action agencies.
Advancing a thriving central ohio commmunity by serving as a catalyst for all businesses to grow and flourish. our mission pillars are connections, government relations, strategic business solutions and talent/workforce.
Training for community action.
To reduce the conditions of poverty by providing comprehensive services to improve lives.to accomplish the mission, hhwp cac will collect and analyze data on the nature of poverty and the existing resources in the area. hhwp cac will…
To provide opportunities to individualsover 50 years of age in tuscarawas county, ohiothrough healthy living, independence, physical andmental health, education, and recreational programs
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…
At united way of north central ohio, we bring people, organizations, and resources together to create solutions that improve the lives of every person in every community in our region.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Hockingathensperry Community Action and the most unlike its peers is Brighten Your Future. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 27 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 6% of your grantees by number, and just 2% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
148 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. 148 of the 302 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 FRIENDS OF THE HOCKING HILLS STATE PARK ↗
- Who funds HAVEN OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds HAVAR INC ↗
- Who funds FOCUSING PHILANTHROPY INC ↗
- Who funds FIRST BOOK ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds OPEN ARMS PREGNANCY CENTER ↗
- Who funds VISION TO LEARN ↗
- Who funds ATHENS COUNTY FOOD PANTRY ↗
- Who funds The Ohio University Foundation ↗
- Who funds OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds MAYO CLINIC ↗
- Who funds OPEN ARMS PREGNANCY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF SE OHIO ↗
- Who funds RURAL ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds ATHENS CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ATHENS PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT ↗
- Who funds OHIO VALLEY MUSEUM OF DISCOVERYINC ↗
- Who funds STUARTS OPERA HOUSE ↗
- Who funds GREATER MINNEAPOLIS CRISIS NURSERY ↗
- Who funds LOGAN THEATER 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: Athens County Foundation · Peoples Bank Foundation · Columbus Foundation · Sisters of St Joseph Charitable Fund Inc · Community Foundations Inc · American Electric Power Foundation · Park National Corporation Foundation · Healthpath Foundation of Ohio · The CareSource Foundation · Osteopathic Heritage Foundation · J William & Mary Straker Charitable Fdn · United Way of Central Ohio Inc
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 Foundation for Appalachian Ohio 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.
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