· Private foundation
Gardiner Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k27 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $63k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| ATO FOR GAMMA UPSILON ISU | $25,000 |
| CHURCH OF THE WESTERN RESERVE | $13,000 |
| UNIVERSITY SCHOOL | $12,500 |
| RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE OF CLEVELAND | $12,000 |
| FRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS | $4,500 |
| RONALD HOUSE BIRDIE CHALLENGE | $4,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $3,000 |
| CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART | $2,500 |
| BLUE COATS | $1,500 |
| THE ROWFANT CLUB | $1,200 |
| OCEAN REEF CHAPEL FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
| MERCY HEALTH | $1,000 |
| CASE WESTERN RESERVE | $1,000 |
| BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS | $1,000 |
| BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY | $1,000 |
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.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY17–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 99% of your 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 +35% since the first grant, against +32% for the ones you funded once.
44 repeat relationships — 29 still active in FY2025, 15 since wound down; 2 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, 99% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $1k 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
- RMRONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF NORTHEAST OHIO INC8× · 2018–2025 · $110k · revenue +159%
- THTHE HUNTING VALLEY FOUNDATION6× · 2020–2025 · $66k · revenue +41%
- USUNIVERSITY SCHOOL7× · 2019–2025 · $44k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- HSHIRAM SCHOLARSHIP FUNDone grant, 2017 · $10k
- HAHIRAM ALUMNI OFFICE (HINRICHSEN SCHOLARSHIP FUND)one grant, 2018 · $10k
- USUNIVERSITY SCHOOL ANNUAL FUND (GGARDINERone grant, 2018 · $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.
Enhance the lives of all residents of greater cleveland, now and for generations to come, by working together with our donors to build community endowment, address needs through grantmaking, and provide leadership on key community issues.
To identify, activate, and support informed and passionate philanthropists who strive to improve the quality of life in our community. we accomplish this by:- building a permanent source of charitable funding- cultivating strategic…
To improve the health of children, teenagers and young adults through excellence in patient care, education, research, advocacy and community partnerships.
Asco association promotes the common business interests of its members by: (1) advocating for policies that improve the quality of cancer care; (2) maintaining the highest standards of oncology medical care through programs supporting…
See schedule o:asco is a professional oncology society committed to conquering cancer through research, education, and promotion of the highest quality patient care.
To harness the collective expertise of ohio's ceos to advocate for policies that improve ohio's economic competitiveness.
To lead and equip ohio philanthropy to be effective partners for change in our communities.
To develop charitable gifts and resources dedicated to building healthier communities in southwest ohio.
Provide comprehensive services that benefit the financial institution industry in ohio.
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
The ohio state bar association (the "association") is an unincorporated voluntary non-profit organization. the association was formed to promote justice and advance the interests of the legal profession.
As the state's leading business advocate and resource, the ohio chamber of commerce aggressively champions free enterprise, economic competitiveness and growth for the benefit of all ohioans.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Ronald Mcdonald House Charities of Northeast Ohio Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Stephen a Comunale Jr 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 56 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) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% 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.
31 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. 31 of the 82 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 RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE CHARITIES OF NORTHEAST OHIO INC ↗
- Who funds THE HUNTING VALLEY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds UNIVERSITY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds ALPHA TAU OMEGA FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS ↗
- Who funds THE ROWFANT CLUB ↗
- Who funds BLUECOATS INC ↗
- Who funds Bucknell University ↗
- Who funds THE STEPHEN A COMUNALE JR CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds URBAN SQUASH CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds Mercy Health ↗
- Who funds BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS OF GREATER CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds GOLFERS AGAINST CANCER 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: The Cleveland Foundation · The Catherine L & Edward a Lozick Foundation · The Lozick Family Foundation · The Swagelok Foundation · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · American Endowment Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
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 Gardiner Family 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.
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 Gardiner Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Gardiner Family 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.