· Private foundation
Helen E Allen Charitable Foundation
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 FY2021–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k23 grants · $78k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM | $10,000 |
| CINCINNATI ZOO | $10,000 |
| ART ACADEMY OF CINCINNATI | $7,500 |
| OHIO VALLEY VOICES | $5,000 |
| CINCINNATI FIRE MUSEUM | $5,000 |
| CINCINNATI PRESERVATION ASSOCIATION | $5,000 |
| ADVENTURE CREW | $5,000 |
| CINCINNATI STREET SOCCER | $5,000 |
| CINCINNATI NATURE CENTER | $5,000 |
| PRO BONO PARTNERSHIP OF OHIO | $2,500 |
| ALS UNITED OHIO | $2,500 |
| ADOPT A CLASS | $2,500 |
| FAITH FREEDOM LIFE | $2,500 |
| SPRINGER SCHOOL & CENTER | $2,500 |
| WOMEN'S ART CLUB OF CINCINNATI | $2,500 |
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, $5k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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.
26 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 8 since wound down; 7 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, 77% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $23k 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
- CFCINCINNATI FIRE MUSEUM5× · 2021–2025 · $25k · revenue +18%
- OVOHIO VALLEY VOICES5× · 2021–2025 · $25k · revenue +4%
- AAART ACADEMY OF CINCINNATI4× · 2022–2025 · $15k · revenue +2%
Funded once
- CHCHILDREN'S HOME OF CINCINNATone grant, 2021 · $10k
- DSDOWN SYNDROME ASSOCIATION OFone grant, 2024 · $5k
- XUXAVIER UNIVERSITY POVERTY BOOKone grant, 2023 · $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.
We support individuals with autism and their families through programming in the areas of academics, adaptive behavior, communication, and social participation.
Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra (CCO) creates intimate, transformative experiences that connect the musically curious.
To build broad based private/public partnerships supporting the conservation and enhancement of our City's parks and greenspaces.
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
To empower Cincinnati entrepreneurs to launch bold, scalable startups; and we work to improve the odds of those startups growing into transformational companies.
To grow the vibrancy and economic prosperity of the cincinnati region.
To offer children and young adults a top quality program that develops, trains and competes as competitive swimmers year-round in a supportive and motivating enviroment that respects, challenges and nurtures them as athletes, students, and…
The mission of the cincinnati observatory is to maintain the integrity and heritage of an historic 19th century observatory and to educate, engage, and inspire our community about astronomy and science.
Empowering people. saving wildlife.
To develop and promote economic development, talent initiatives and the unique offerings in the cincinnati region.
Helping people grow and succeed through life-long, experience-based learning.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Cincinnati Museum Association and the most unlike its peers is Faith Freedom Life. 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 41 years old; the field is 17. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 21% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% 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.
24 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. 24 of the 43 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 CINCINNATI MUSEUM ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI FIRE MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds OHIO VALLEY VOICES ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI PRESERVATION ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI NATURE CENTER ↗
- Who funds ART ACADEMY OF CINCINNATI ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI THERAPEUTIC RIDING AND HORSEM HORSEMANSHIP ↗
- Who funds PRO BONO PARTNERSHIP OF OHIO ↗
- Who funds SPRINGER SCHOOL AND CENTER ↗
- Who funds Cancer Family Care Inc ↗
- Who funds BREAKTHROUGH T1D ↗
- Who funds THE DRAGONFLY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Contemporary Arts Center ↗
- Who funds GORMAN HERITAGE FARM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Easter Seals Tristate ↗
- Who funds BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA COUNCIL 438 DAN BEARD ↗
- Who funds ADVENTURE CREW ↗
- Who funds CARDINAL LAND CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds ALS UNITED OHIO INC ↗
- Who funds BEECH ACRES ↗
- Who funds Faith Freedom Life ↗
- Who funds Adopt A Class Foundation 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: J Frederick & Helen B Vogel Trust · The Greater Cincinnati Foundation · Robert a & Marian K Kennedy Charitable Trust · Johnson Charitable Gift Fund · Charles Scott Riley III Foundation · The Thomas J Emery Memorial · Charles H Dater Foundation Inc · Agnes Nordloh Charitable Trust · Sutphin Family Foundation Ica · Pfau Charitable Foundation · Louise Taft Semple Foundation · Elsa M Heisel Sule Charitable Trust 2005
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 Helen E Allen Charitable 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 Helen E Allen Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Helen E Allen Charitable 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.