· Private foundation
Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k75 grants · $261k
- $10k–50k24 grants · $334k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| UNITED WAY OF THE GREATER LV | $35,000 |
| NORTHAMPTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION | $35,000 |
| NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MUSIC MERCHANTS | $20,000 |
| FOX CHASE CANCER CENTER | $20,000 |
| WILDLANDS CONSERVANCY | $17,500 |
| NAZARETH AREA FOOD BANK | $15,000 |
| MORAVIAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $15,000 |
| ARTS QUEST | $12,500 |
| NEW BETHANY MINISTRIES | $12,000 |
| BIRTHPLACE OF COUNTRY MUSIC | $12,000 |
| MEALS ON WHEELS LV | $10,000 |
| RIVER CROSSING YMCA | $10,000 |
| ALLENTOWN ART MUSEUM | $10,000 |
| COMMUNITY ACTION DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF BETHLEHEM | $10,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA OUTWARD BOUND SCHOOL | $10,000 |
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 (FY17–25, $177k) land where the poverty rate runs at 11%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 96% 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 +25% since the first grant, against +19% for the ones you funded once.
136 repeat relationships — 88 still active in FY2025, 48 since wound down; 10 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, 93% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $44k 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
- NCNORTHAMPTON COUNTY AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION6× · 2020–2025 · $210k · revenue +59%
- NANAZARETH AREA FOOD BANK INC9× · 2017–2025 · $122k · revenue +68%
- GIGUITARS IN THE CLASSROOM9× · 2017–2025 · $90k · revenue +92%
Funded once
- LULEHIGH UNIVERSITYone grant, 2022 · $10k · revenue +18%
- CACOMMUNITY ACTION COMMITTEE OF LEHIGH VALLEYone grant, 2021 · $10k
- MOMUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORKone grant, 2017 · $10k · revenue -39%
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.
Gettysburg college is a residential, undergraduate college of the liberal arts and sciences.
Wilson college empowers students to be confident and critical thinkers, creative visionaries, effective communicators, honorable leaders, and agents of justice.
The cleveland institute of music's mission is to empower the world's most talented classical music students to fulfill their dreams and potential.
To create a musical community where high quality instruction and performance opportunities are available to all.
See schedule o.we are inspired by the ideals of our founder who, in 1896, emphasized respect for all people and ideas, who honored knowledge with practice, progress and the common good. our historical commitment to experiential learning…
The mission of winchester community music school is to provide outstanding and diverse musical education and performance, accessible to all, in winchester, neighboring communities, and beyond.
To present world class chamber music ensembles and soloists, promising emerging artists, and innovative programs; and to foster an appreciation for chamber music in the pittsburgh community by offering educational programs and experiences.
Museum has a mission to create opportunties for everyone to experience art that broadens understanding of the past, fosters community connections to the present, and creates diverse possbilities for the future.
The mission of lycoming college is to provide a distinguished baccalaureate education in the liberal arts and sciences within a coeducational, supportive, and residential setting.
The louisville academy of music welcomes everyone to join our musical community. lam nurtures lifelong learners, not solely as musicians but also as creative, inspired people. equity in music education is a force to realize potential,…
To collect, display and interpret objects in craft art and design.
Lawrence university of wisconsin, through its undergraduate residential college and conservatory of music, educates students in the liberal arts and sciences. the university is devoted to excellence and integrity in all of its activities…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Old Town School of Folk Music and the most unlike its peers is Woodsongs Inc. 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 39 years old; the field is 19. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% startups (under 5 years old) — 2% of your grantees by number, and just 3% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 9% 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.
120 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. 120 of the 191 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 NORTHAMPTON COUNTY AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NAZARETH AREA FOOD BANK INC ↗
- Who funds GUITARS IN THE CLASSROOM ↗
- Who funds NEW BETHANY INC ↗
- Who funds HCSC - BLOOD CENTER ↗
- Who funds WILDLANDS CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds STATE THEATRE CENTER FOR THE ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds MUSICAL INSTRUMENT MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds ALLENTOWN ART MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds OLD TOWN SCHOOL OF FOLK MUSIC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY MUSIC SCHOOL OF COLLEGEVILLE LTD ↗
- Who funds WILDLIFE INFORMATION CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MORAVIAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL MUSIC MUSEUM (AMERICAS SHRINE TO MUSIC) ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF AMERICAN SONG ARCHIVES INC ↗
- Who funds ARTSQUEST ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF THE GREATER LEHIGH VALLEY ↗
- Who funds COUNTRY MUSIC FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds ARTSQUEST FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds GODFREY DANIELS ↗
- Who funds NAZARETH DOWNTOWN ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds MEMORIAL LIBRARY OF NAZARETH & VICINITY ↗
- Who funds ALLENTOWN RESCUE MISSION INC ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA FOLKSONG SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds ALLENTOWN SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION 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: United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley · Lehigh Valley Community Foundation · Ppl Foundation · Air Products Foundation · The Century Fund Trust · John a and Margaret Post Foundation · Harry C Trexler Estate · Sylvia Perkin Perpetual Charitable Trust · Ross J Born and Wendy G Born Charitable Trust · Frederick H Bedford Jr & Margaret S Bedford Charitable Foundation · Butz Foundation · The Rider-Pool 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 Martin Guitar Charitable 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.
- Trustees of Boston University — 12% of income from government
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute — 8% of income from government
- The Morris Museum Inc — 7% 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 Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Martin Guitar Charitable 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.