· Private foundation
Morse and Betty Johnson Family 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 FY2020–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k10 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $165k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Individual grant recipient | $25,000 |
| PLAYHOUSE IN THE PARK | $25,000 |
| THE KNOW THEATRE | $15,000 |
| BRIGHT BEGINNINGS | $10,000 |
| TREGARON CONSERVANCY | $10,000 |
| SO OTHERS MIGHT EAT (SOME) | $10,000 |
| CINCINNATI CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $10,000 |
| DC BILLINGUAL PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| CINCINNATI SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $10,000 |
| JOHN EATON SCHOOL HSA | $10,000 |
| NATURE FOUNDATION AT WINTERGREEN | $10,000 |
| FREE STORE FOOD BANK | $10,000 |
| EMMA WILLARD SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| CINCINNATI SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CHICAGO LIGHTS | $5,000 |
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 (FY21–21, $3k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, 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.
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 +18% since the first grant, against +16% for the ones you funded once.
29 repeat relationships — 18 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 4 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, 92% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $18k 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
- CSCINCINNATI SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION6× · 2020–2025 · $80k · revenue +68%
- TCTregaron Conservancy6× · 2020–2025 · $75k · revenue +190%
- TSTHE SEVEN HILLS SCHOOL2× · 2021–2022 · $70k · revenue +41%
Funded once
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2020 · $37k
- GSGOOD SAMARITAN HOSP FDTN-FREE HEALTH CTR DENTAL PROGRAMone grant, 2023 · $13k
- GSGOOD SAMARITAN HOSP FDTN-SCHOOL TO WORK PROGRAMone grant, 2023 · $13k
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 Cincinnati Arts Association (CAA), a not-for-profit, was founded in 1990 to serve as a manager, presenter and educator. CAA's mission is to present a broad range of high quality performing and visual arts programs, develop diverse…
The mission of the cleveland museum of art (cma) is to fulfill its dual roles as one of the world's most distinguished comprehensive art museums and as one of northeastern ohio's principal civic and cultural institutions. the museum,…
Cincinnati Public Radio is the trusted, independent source of journalism, music and culture empowering a vibrant, engaged and informed community.
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
We are Cincinnati's national theater - committed to bringing diverse, engaging works of great artistry to our community, and to putting Cincinnati's artistic excellence in the national spotlight.
The mission of The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati (TCT) is to educate, entertain and engage audiences of all ages through professional theatrical productions and arts education programming. Our vision is to awaken a lifelong love of…
Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra (CCO) creates intimate, transformative experiences that connect the musically curious.
Through the power of art, we contribute to a more vibrant cincinnati by inspiring its people and connecting our communities.
Mission: to champion and elevate the arts and cultural expression of greater columbus.vision: power of art realized. people engaged. city energized.
Chicago opera theater expands the tradition of opera as a living art form by engaging lovers of music and storytelling through innovative experiences, predominantly of new and rarely performed works.
The organization's mission is to educate students for creative occupations in diverse fields of arts and media.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Cincinnati Scholarship Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Southeastern Ecumenical Ministry 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 40 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) — 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.
29 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. 29 of the 52 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 SCHOLARSHIP FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Tregaron Conservancy ↗
- Who funds THE SEVEN HILLS SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BRIGHT BEGINNINGS INC ↗
- Who funds EMMA WILLARD SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds SOME INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE FOUNDATION AT WINTERGREEN ↗
- Who funds DC BILINGUAL PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds Know Theatre of Cincinnati ↗
- Who funds FREESTORE FOODBANK INC ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL INFANTRY MUSEUM FOUNDATIONINC ↗
- Who funds The Contemporary Arts Center ↗
- Who funds Robert Oneal Multicultural Arts Center ↗
- Who funds THE CLASSICAL THEATRE OF HARLEM INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHEASTERN ECUMENICAL MINISTRY INC ↗
- Who funds Kids In Danger ↗
- Who funds CHICAGO LIGHTS ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO INC ↗
- Who funds HEARTFELT TIDBITS INC ↗
- Who funds DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDATION 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: The Greater Cincinnati Foundation · Carol Ann and Ralph V Haile Jr Foundation · Louise Taft Semple Foundation · Ge Aerospace Foundation · The Wohlgemuth Herschede Foundation Co Fifth Third Bank Na Agent · Josephine S Russell Charitable · Fidelity Foundation · Millstone Fund · The Thomas J Emery Memorial · Charles H Dater Foundation Inc · Andrew Jergens Foundation · John a Schroth Family Char Tr
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 Morse and Betty Johnson 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.
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How do I get to Morse and Betty Johnson Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Morse and Betty Johnson 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.