· Public charity
In His Steps Foundation
To encourage and teach christlike stewardship which becomes the basis for personal giving and estate planning; to also provide a prudently managed repository for capital, invested for the purpose of distribution to ministries proclaiming the gospel of jesus christ and for other charitable purposes.
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 139 grants below total $6,495,172 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $7,892,184 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $1,397,012 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 $10k28 grants · $198k
- $10k–50k89 grants · $1.6M
- $50k–250k14 grants · $1.2M
- $250k+8 grants · $3.5M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| GLOBAL MEDIA OUTREACH | $600,000 |
| OPEN DOOR CHRISTIAN SCHOOL | $582,078 |
| CORNERSTONE OF HOPE INC | $503,210 |
| MISSION INCREASE | $459,500 |
| HARVEST RIDGE CHURCH | $400,000 |
| PROVIDENCE EVANGELICAL FREE CHURCH | $368,885 |
| CRU | $306,000 |
| YOUTH FOR CHRIST GREATER CLEVELAND | $279,220 |
| CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY ALLIANCE | $204,000 |
| PARKSIDE CHURCH | $111,000 |
| CENTERPOINT CHURCH | $100,000 |
| NATIONAL CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION | $100,000 |
| OPERATION EXODUS USA | $90,000 |
| SAMARITAN'S PURSE | $89,654 |
| CROSSROADS FARM | $86,000 |
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 (FY17–24, $1.6M) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 86% 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 +35% since the first grant, against +25% for the ones you funded once.
242 repeat relationships — 96 still active in FY2024, 146 since wound down; 37 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $653k 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
- AFAMBASSADORS FOOTBALL7× · 2017–2024 · $3.0M · revenue +35% · 37% of their budget
- ODOPEN DOOR CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS INC7× · 2017–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +225%
- MIMISSION INCREASE5× · 2020–2024 · $1.2M · revenue +17%
Funded once
- CCRUone grant, 2018 · $683k
- GBGRACE BRETHREN CHURCHone grant, 2021 · $167k
- SISea Island Habitat For Humanity Incgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $105k · revenue +74%
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.
Christian Mission for the United Nations Community is a ministry aimed at leading the head of every nation and other top leaders to faith in Jesus Christ and helping them to walk in dependence upon God as they discharge the…
Christianity Today is a global community inspired by evangelical conviction to advance the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God. Our mission is to elevate the storytellers and sages of the global church.
To provide resources, training, and continuing support to leaders in the us and around the world in order that they may help others find freedom in christ.
Global City Mission Initiative is dedicated to cross-cultural evanglism, disciplemaking, church planting among diverse diaspora populations in strategic cities reaching out evangelistically to start multiply churches, training believers to…
Serving and pastoring overseas workers on their own turf and equipping nationals by training and empowering them in their work of advancing the gospel.
Equipping and enabling believers worldwide to conduct church-based evangelism projects to reach unbelievers and make disciples.
To proclaim the gospel, grow the messianic jewish community and engage the church concerning israel and the jewish people. this is done through education, evangelism and being a movement leader, all with excellence in order to transform…
Mobilization of churches in America by taking pastors and laymen on vision and service trips overseas in fulfillment of Jesus command to go ye into all the world, making disciples...
International missions: this organization is an international mission agency focusing on leadership development through teaching of the scriptures
To provide support for the efforts of christians of the former soviet union in reaching the influencers of their countries for christ.
To present the gospel by providing life-long opportunities to integrate faith and learning through balanced, biblically based scholarship, training people to love god by renewing their minds and equipping the church to engage the world for…
Uncharted ministries informs, inspires and challenges the christian church to serve the people of the middle east and in uncharted lands.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Commission to Every Nation and the most unlike its peers is Living Waters Retreat. 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 30 years old; the field is 16. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.5% 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.
259 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. 259 of the 443 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 AMBASSADORS FOOTBALL ↗
- Who funds GLOBAL MEDIA OUTREACH ↗
- Who funds NATL CHRISTIAN CHARITABLE FDN INC ↗
- Who funds OPERATION EXODUS USA ↗
- Who funds OPEN DOOR CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS INC ↗
- Who funds MISSION INCREASE ↗
- Who funds GREATER CLEVELAND YOUTH FOR CHRIST INC ↗
- Who funds The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc ↗
- Who funds THE AMERICAN POLICY ROUNDTABLE ↗
- Who funds CORNERSTONE OF HOPE INC ↗
- Who funds CORNERSTONE CHRISTIAN ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds DONOR ADVISED CHARITABLE GIVING INC ↗
- Who funds IMAGE CLEAR ULTRASOUND INC ↗
- Who funds CROSSROADS FARM INC ↗
- Who funds CBMC INC ↗
- Who funds MISSION INCREASE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds True Freedom Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUTH FOR CHRISTUSA INC ↗
- Who funds CUYAHOGA VALLEY CHRISTIAN ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds CORNERSTONE PREGNANCY SERVICES ↗
- Who funds The Rosser Foundation dba International Cooperating Ministries ↗
- Who funds GOD CARES MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds SAMARITAN'S PURSE ↗
- Who funds Honor Service Dogs Inc ↗
- Who funds SCRANTON ROAD MINISTRIES CDC ↗
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: Christ Foundation · Akron Community Foundation · Crossroads Foundation · The Dalton Family Foundation · The Signatry Charitable Trust · The Cleveland Foundation · Christian Community Foundation Inc · Servant Foundation · Community West Foundation · Richards Family Foundation · Ohio Christian Education Network Scholarship Granting Organization · The Maclellan Foundation 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 In His Steps 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.
- The Shelter for Abused Women & Children Inc — 2% of income from government
- Food for the Poor 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 In His Steps Foundation?
Find your warmest path to In His Steps 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.