· Private foundation
John G & Phyllis W Smale 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $24k
- $10k–50k3 grants · $42k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CINCINNATI PARKS FOUNDATION | $50,000 |
| LOVE GROWS PROGRAM INC | $15,000 |
| SPRINGER SCHOOL & CENTER | $15,000 |
| MILL CREEK ALLIANCE | $11,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $5,000 |
| BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER CINCINNATI | $5,000 |
| OHIO RIVER FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| QUEEN CITY BOOK BANK | $3,000 |
| EVERY CHILD SUCCEEDS | $3,000 |
| DENVER PARK TRUST | $1,000 |
| KENYON COLLEGE | $500 |
| YELLOW SPRINGS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $500 |
| DUKE UNIVERSITY | $500 |
| FREESTORE FOODBANK | $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 (FY22–25, $11k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +36% since the first grant, against -91% for the ones you funded once.
10 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 3 since wound down; 5 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, 84% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $19k 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
- CPCincinnati Parks Foundation6× · 2020–2025 · $272k · revenue +57%
- MCMILL CREEK ALLIANCE4× · 2020–2025 · $47k · revenue +200%
- TLTHE LOVE GROWS PROGRAM INC3× · 2023–2025 · $26k · revenue +13%
Funded once
- MHMUSIC HALL REVITALIZATION COMPANY INCone grant, 2021 · $20k · revenue -91%
- CMCINCINNATI MUSIC HALLone grant, 2020 · $20k
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.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
To grow the vibrancy and economic prosperity of the cincinnati region.
To empower Cincinnati entrepreneurs to launch bold, scalable startups; and we work to improve the odds of those startups growing into transformational companies.
Creating leaders who, through the discovery of their own abilities, kindle the potential in others and better a dynamic world.
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
Cincinnati Public Radio is the trusted, independent source of journalism, music and culture empowering a vibrant, engaged and informed community.
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.
To harness the collective expertise of ohio's ceos to advocate for policies that improve ohio's economic competitiveness.
To develop and promote economic development, talent initiatives and the unique offerings in the cincinnati region.
Empower the people of greater cleveland to achieve success through technology, innovation and connected community.
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…
Advancing a thriving central ohio commmunity by serving as a catalyst for all businesses to grow and flourish. our mission pillars are connections, government relations, strategic business solutions and talent/workforce.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Seven Hills School and the most unlike its peers is Denver Park Trust. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
17 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. 17 of the 19 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 Parks Foundation ↗
- Who funds MILL CREEK ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds THE LOVE GROWS PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds CISE ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI CENTER CITY DEVELOPMENT CORP ↗
- Who funds MUSIC HALL REVITALIZATION COMPANY INC ↗
- Who funds SPRINGER SCHOOL AND CENTER ↗
- Who funds Every Child Succeeds ↗
- Who funds THE SEVEN HILLS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUBS OF GREATER CINCINNATI ↗
- Who funds Ohio River Foundation ↗
- Who funds DUKE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LITERACY NETWORK OF GREATER CINCINNATI DBA QUEEN CITY BOOK BANK ↗
- Who funds KENYON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds Denver Park Trust ↗
- Who funds FREESTORE FOODBANK INC ↗
- Who funds YELLOW SPRINGS COMMUNITY FOUNDATION ↗
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: Louise Taft Semple Foundation · Carol Ann and Ralph V Haile Jr Foundation · The Greater Cincinnati Foundation · Johnson Charitable Gift Fund · Williams Foundation · Charles H Dater Foundation Inc · Duke Energy Foundation · The James J and Joan a Gardner Family Foundation · The Thomas J Emery Memorial · Andrew Jergens Foundation · Fidelity Foundation · The Frances R Luther Charitable Trust
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 John G & Phyllis W Smale 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 John G & Phyllis W Smale Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to John G & Phyllis W Smale 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.