· Private foundation
Arras Foundation
Its FY2022 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 FY2018–2022.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2022
- Under $10k17 grants · $32k
- $10k–50k6 grants · $143k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $500k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $150,000 |
| LANCASTER COUNTY COUNCIL OF THE ARTS | $120,000 |
| KERSHAW AREA RESOURCE EXCHANGE (KARE) | $110,000 |
| GRASP - GREAT FALLS REFERRAL AND ASSISTANCE | $64,500 |
| A FATHER'S WAY - LANCASTER FATHERHOOD PROJECT | $55,000 |
| HOPE IN LANCASTER INC | $49,919 |
| LANCASTER COUNTY COUNCIL OF THE ARTS | $31,497 |
| FURMAN UNIVERSITY | $25,000 |
| CHESTER COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $16,445 |
| KERSHAW COMMUNITY PARK COUNCIL INC | $10,454 |
| EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION OF USC LANCASTER | $10,000 |
| UPPER PALMETTO YMCA | $5,040 |
| EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION OF USC LANCASTER | $5,000 |
| LANCASTER COUNTY COUNCIL OF THE ARTS | $3,000 |
| LANCASTER COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT | $2,000 |
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 (FY18–22, $1.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 89% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 14% of Arras 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, 98% of the giving stays in SC; read by stated purpose it is 87% — 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 +50% since the first grant, against +21% for the ones you funded once.
22 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2022, 12 since wound down; 5 grantees were first funded in FY2022 (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 FY2022, 60% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $273k 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
- HIHOPE in Lancaster Inc5× · 2018–2022 · $868k · revenue +10% · 29% of their budget
- LCLANCASTER COUNTY COUNCIL OF THE ARTS5× · 2018–2022 · $456k · revenue +91% · 51% of their budget
- FUFURMAN UNIVERSITY5× · 2018–2022 · $321k · revenue +26%
Funded once
- LCLANCASTER COUNTY SOCIETY FOR HISTORICAL PRESERVATION INCone grant, 2020 · $260k · revenue -58%
- KAKERSHAW AREA RESOURCE EXCHANGEgraduatedone grant, 2019 · $115k · revenue +416%
- HAHOUSING AUTHORITY OF LANCASTER COUNTY INCone grant, 2018 · $82k
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 best healthcare, for the lowest cost, for the most people.
Enhance public safety and the quality of life in lancaster by engaging the community and advancing current crime prevention strategies.
Support member businesses through education and promotion, and support the quality of life in lancaster county through promoting compatible economic development.
The mission of the lancaster county council on aging is to provide a system of coordinated and comprehensive services to enable older persons of lancaster county to continue to maintain their independence.
Empowering people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (i/dd) and their families to lead full, satisfying, independent lives of their choice.
To provide comprehensive, skillful, cost effective emergency and non- emergency health care services to the lancaster community while continuing to evolve with changing health care needs.
Enhance the economic well-being of lancaster county by bringing together business resources, capital and government for selective, measurable and sustainable growth.
To positively impact lives by mobilizing people and resources in lancaster county with an emphasis on healthy communities, youth opportunities, financial security and community resiliency by partnering with organizations and community…
To inspire curiosity, creativity, and confidence by fostering an inclusive environment for hands-on stem exploration. we actively seek to make our facility and educational programs accessible to all.
The lancaster chamber of commerce & industry's mission is to create the environment, facilitate partnerships, and lead on issues that elevate business success. the chamber has 5 strategic priorities: public policy, workforce, business…
Central business group on health advocates for the appropriate balance between cost and quality of employee healthcare in lancaster county by providing education on healthcare issues, promoting cooperation among payers, providers and…
CTS Community Development is a behavioral health provider committed to helping individuals from underserved communities to live safe, productive, and meaningful lives
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Foundation for the Carolinas and the most unlike its peers is The Lancaster County Partners for Youth. 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 31 years old; the field is 12. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 27% startups (under 5 years old) — 7% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 8% lost their exemption, against 16% 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.
33 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. 33 of the 59 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 HOPE in Lancaster Inc ↗
- Who funds A FATHERS WAY ↗
- Who funds LANCASTER COUNTY COUNCIL OF THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds FURMAN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LANCASTER COUNTY SOCIETY FOR HISTORICAL PRESERVATION INC ↗
- Who funds KERSHAW COMMUNITY PARK COUNCIL INC ↗
- Who funds Christian Services Inc ↗
- Who funds York County Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Inc ↗
- Who funds UPPER PALMETTO YMCA INC ↗
- Who funds KERSHAW AREA RESOURCE EXCHANGE ↗
- Who funds GOOD SAMARITAN MEDICAL CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds FORT LAWN COMMUNITY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CATAWBA RIVERKEEPER FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds FOUNDATION FOR THE CAROLINAS ↗
- Who funds G R A S P ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITIES IN SCHOOLS OF LANCASTER COUNTY ↗
- Who funds COLUMBUS PARKER TRACK CLUB ↗
- Who funds Educational Foundation of USCL Inc ↗
- Who funds GOLDENCARE INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY ASSOCIATION OF SOUTH CAROLINA INC ↗
- Who funds HORSE N AROUND TRC ↗
- Who funds Lancaster County Literacy Council ↗
- Who funds GIRLS ON THE RUN TRI COUNTY SC ↗
- Who funds ALSTON WILKES SOCIETY ↗
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 Springs Close Foundation Inc · Nutramax Family Foundation · Foundation for the Carolinas · Duke Energy Foundation · John T Stevens Foundation · Comporium Foundation Inc · Chester Healthcare Foundation · Central Carolina Community Foundation · United Way of Chester County In · United Way of York County SC · Community Partnership Foundation · Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina
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 Arras 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 Arras Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Arras 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.