· Public charity
Lutheran Charities
LUTHERAN CHARITIES is a ministry of the niagara frontier conference of the upstate new york synod of the evangelical lutheran church in america.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 2 grants below total $13,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $59,392 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $45,892 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.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NIAGARA AREA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY | $7,500 |
| MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE PROJECT INC | $6,000 |
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, $6k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 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.
6 repeat relationships — 0 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, 0% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $14k 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
- LCLUMIN CAMPUS MINISTRY2× · 2022–2023 · $44k
- TSTHE SAMARITAN PASTORAL COUNSELING CENTER OF THE NIAGARA FRONTIER INC7× · 2017–2023 · $34k · revenue -29%
- SJST JOHNS LUTHERAN CHURCH5× · 2017–2021 · $24k
Funded once
- COCOMMUNITY OF GOOD NEIGHBORSone grant, 2023 · $18k
- WNWestern New York Impact Foundationgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $10k · revenue +111%
- LCLAKE CHAUTAUQUA LUTHERAN CENTER INC4× · 2017–2023 · $10k · revenue -29%
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.
Seeking to put god's love into action, habitat for humanity brings people together to build homes, communities, and hope to realize our vision of a world where everyone has a decent place to live. syracuse habitat for humanity adheres to a…
To coordinate efforts of volunteers to serve food to those in need and to educate the public about the needs of the poor and hungry in the city of syracuse.
Our mission is to provide for the physical, social, and spiritual needs of individuals we serve, in a Christian environment. The organization is an adult care facility which can accommodate 48 residents.
To relieve the poor, the distressed and the under privileged and combat community deterioration in the Buffalo-Niagara region of New York State, by establishing and maintaining a faith-based community development corporation.
East Buffalo Development Corporation is a community-based real estate development corporation committed to our mission of leveraging private and public funds to drive equitable and inclusive eastside planning, construction, land use, and…
The organization provides charitable relief in the form of emergency shelter, material needs, and compassionate care for the homeless and persons in need in the eastern niagara county, new york area.
Partnership for the Public Good, Inc. is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to help build a more just, sustainable, and culturally vibrant community through action-oriented research, policy development, and citizen engagement.
Seeking to put god's love into action, habitat for humanity brings people together to build homes, communities and hope.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Seneca Street Community Development Corporation and the most unlike its peers is Western New York Impact Foundation. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
8 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. 8 of the 14 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 THE SAMARITAN PASTORAL COUNSELING CENTER OF THE NIAGARA FRONTIER INC ↗
- Who funds SENECA STREET COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds PEACE OF THE CITY MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds Western New York Impact Foundation ↗
- Who funds LAKE CHAUTAUQUA LUTHERAN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds NIAGARA AREA HABITAT FOR HUMANITY INC ↗
- Who funds JERICHO ROAD MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Avenue Project 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: Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Inc · First Niagara Foundation · United Way of Buffalo and Erie County · 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 Lutheran Charities 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.