· Private foundation
Kershner Sisters Foundation
Its FY2024 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 FY2019–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k4 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $10k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Star Community Inc | $10,000 |
| The ARC of Washington County | $4,800 |
| Children In Need Inc | $4,500 |
| Friends of Washington County Rural Heritage Museum | $3,900 |
| Washington County Historical Society | $1,500 |
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 (FY20–24, $45k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +56% since the first grant, against +15% for the ones you funded once.
9 repeat relationships — 3 still active in FY2024, 6 since wound down; 2 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, 78% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $5k 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
- SCSTAR COMMUNITY INC4× · 2020–2024 · $22k · revenue +50%
- WCWASHINGTON COUNTY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS3× · 2019–2021 · $21k · revenue +88%
- AOARC OF WASHINGTON COUNTY INC2× · 2020–2024 · $15k · revenue +45%
Funded once
- BGBOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF WASHINGTON COUNTYgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $13k · revenue +35%
- MCMason-Dixon Council BSAone grant, 2021 · $5k
- HGHorizon Goodwill Industriesone grant, 2022 · $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.
The organization provides programs and services that meet the business and professional needs of its members while promoting efforts to make the community a great place to live and work.
The mission of the washington county free library system is to continually improve our service to the public by:* providing the public with free access to library materials in a variety of formats* promoting community enrichment, economic…
Rescue and care for stray or unwanted animals.
Promotes the arts and related activities at local, state and national levels
To work together with our interdisciplinary team to provide quality, coordinated, comprehensive patient and family-centered care that addresses the physical, spiritual, emotional and practical needs of our patients. we encourage our…
To represent the business community of howard county, maryland
Preserve the history of Harford County, Maryland
To promote and advance the interest of the washington county business community.
The washington county historical societys mission is to forge meaningful connections across generations to washington countys hard-working legacy.
Provide behavioral guidance and promote health, social, educational and vocational development of boys and girls six to eighteen years of age.
Historical museum & educational society
To create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships that ignite the power and promise of youth.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Boys & Girls Club of Washington County and the most unlike its peers is Friends of the Wash Co Rural Heritage Museum Inc. 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 36 years old; the field is 21. 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.
21 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. 21 of the 27 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 STAR COMMUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COUNTY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS ↗
- Who funds ARC OF WASHINGTON COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF WASHINGTON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds GIRLS INCORPORATED OF WASHINGTON COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S VILLAGE OF WASHINGTON COUNTY INC ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN IN NEED INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COUNTY LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds MERITUS HEALTH FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds Friends of the Wash Co Rural Heritage Museum Inc ↗
- Who funds THE MARYLAND THEATRE ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds BROOK LANE HEALTH SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds BARBARA INGRAM SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN OF VALOR MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds HANCOCK RESCUE SQUAD INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY FREE CLINIC INC ↗
- Who funds FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds Hagerstown Neighborhood Development Partnership Inc ↗
- Who funds BOONSBORO AMBULANCE AND RESCUE SERVICE ↗
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 Community Foundation of Washington County Maryland Inc · Albert E & Naomi B Sinnisen Foundation · The John R Hershey and Anna L Hershey Family Foundation Inc · Nora Roberts Foundation · Alice V & David W Fletcher Foundation Inc · Richard N Funkhouser Foundationinc · The Hamilton Family Foundation Inc · Nisource Charitable Foundation · Holzapfel Family Charitable Foundation C/O James Holzapfel · Michael G Callas Charitable Trust · The Jone L Bowman Foundation Inc · Firstenergy 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 Kershner Sisters 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, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Meritus Health Foundation Inc — 94% of income from government
- Boonsboro Ambulance and Rescue Service — 3% of income from government
- Washington County Museum of Fine Arts — 2% of income from government
- Star Community Inc — 2% 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 Kershner Sisters Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Kershner Sisters 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.