· Private foundation
Helen Johnston Family 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 FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Egan Slough Community | $2,000 |
| Little Miami Conservatory | $1,500 |
| Raptor Inc | $1,500 |
| Mill Creek Alliance | $1,000 |
| Kittymoms Rescue Organization | $1,000 |
| Flathead Spay & Neuter Task Force | $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.
Your human-services grants (FY24–24, $52k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 13%. 0% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-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 16% of Helen Johnston Family Foundation’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, 53% of the giving stays in OH; read by stated purpose it is 47% — 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 +52% since the first grant, against +31% for the ones you funded once.
15 repeat relationships — 4 still active in FY2025, 11 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, 75% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $2k 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
- LMLITTLE MIAMI CONSERVANCY6× · 2020–2025 · $9k · revenue +467%
- CGCITY GOSPEL MISSION AND AFFILIATES6× · 2019–2024 · $5k · revenue +16%
- TMTHE MONTANA LAND RELIANCE5× · 2020–2024 · $4k · revenue +248%
Funded once
- AIADVENTURES IN TRUTH MINISTRIESone grant, 2024 · $50k · revenue -20%
- PTPilots to the Rescueone grant, 2024 · $15k
- TUTROUT UNLIMITED INCgraduatedone grant, 2024 · $13k · revenue +31%
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.
Dedicated to protecting the world's natural environment on behalf of the public by serving as a public interest law firm. refer to schedule o, part iii, line 4a, for list of litigated cases or advocacy work.
We safeguard the earth: its people, its plants and animals, and (see schedule o) the natural systems on which all life depends. we work to restore the integrity of the elements that sustain life - air, land, and water - to defend…
Our mission is to enrich the lives of all people in northeast ohio by conserving natural habitats, restoring the ecological value of our region's lands and waters, and expanding opportunities to connect people from all cultures to…
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Mission is to seek protection of land and water resources through restoration and conservation; and conducting education and outreach on the ecological and economic importance of natural lands. we protect land from development and protect…
The resource renewal institute facilitates the creation, development and implementation of practical strategies to solve the entire complex environmental problem by addressing it comprehensively.
Cascadia wildlands defends and restores cacasia's wild ecosystems in the forests,in the courts, and in the streets. we envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and…
The coalition to protect michigan resources's mission is to be a strong voice for the equitable co-management of michigan's fisheries, with both the great lakes and inland lakes and streams, to insure that conservation principles remain in…
We bring science, policy, and proven solutions directly to communities working to restore the integrity and natural connectivity of the landscapes in which they live. (see schedule o)
Unite all americans to ensure wildlife thrives in a rapidly changing world.
Wild landscapes, inc. (wli) is dedicated to conserving large and connected landscapes globally significant to wildlife and crucial to local communities. our environmental conservation strategy is to empower communities, conservationists,…
To conserve functioning salmon/steelhead eco-system at watershed levels, integrate angling activities with basic scientific research, collect raw data, monitor environmental functions, salmon/steelhead population dynamics, public…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Center for Christian Virtue and the most unlike its peers is KittyMOMs Rescue Organization. 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 47 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.
20 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. 20 of the 28 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 ADVENTURES IN TRUTH MINISTRIES ↗
- Who funds TROUT UNLIMITED INC ↗
- Who funds LITTLE MIAMI CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds EGAN SLOUGH COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds RAPTOR INC ↗
- Who funds CITY GOSPEL MISSION AND AFFILIATES ↗
- Who funds THE MONTANA LAND RELIANCE ↗
- Who funds FLATHEAD SPAY AND NEUTER TASK FORCE INC ↗
- Who funds WORLD WILDLIFE FUND INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL NETWORK FOR YOUTH INC ↗
- Who funds Wildlife Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds CITIZENS FOR A BETTER FLATHEAD ↗
- Who funds PALADIN CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR CHRISTIAN VIRTUE ↗
- Who funds THE OHIO ENVIRONMENTAL COUNCIL ↗
- Who funds The Christ Hospital Foundation ↗
- Who funds MILL CREEK ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds KittyMOMs Rescue Organization ↗
- Who funds COLLISION MINISTRIES 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: Robert A Johnston Foundation · The Greater Cincinnati Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc · American Online Giving Foundation Inc · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Helen Johnston 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 Helen Johnston Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Helen Johnston 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.