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· Public charity
NEIGHBORHOOD LEGAL SERVICES INC
Serving erie, niagara, genesee, wyoming and orleans counties, neighborhood legal services, inc.
$3.4M
Granted FY2024
14
Grants
2
Communities
$630k
Largest
01What you fund
0197% classified
What you funded, over time
Every grant clustered by its grantee’s IRS cause code (NTEE), by year — across FY2017–2024.
Crime & Legal$6.2MHousing & Shelter$573kEducation$232kHuman Services$155kHealth$124kOther$237k
02beneath the categories
Past the labels — and the year it shifted
Beneath the NTEE codes, this is what the grant descriptions actually say.
…and in their own words, year by year
2018
client meetmeet deliverables
2019
client meetmeet deliverables
2020
victims
2021
consultingbenefit keepingkeeping educationaleducational objectsresearchvictims
2022
wnylcdeliveryaid bureauresearchprovisionvictims
2023
educationaldeliverybenefitwnylc'slimitedfurtherancepolicy
Words distinctive to each year’s grant purposes (TF-IDF) · event-driven terms in cyan.
03FY2024 · 14 grants
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k2 grants · $16k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $124k
- $50k–250k2 grants · $217k
- $250k+5 grants · $3.1M
$86,887
Median grant
2
States reached
$8.3M
Total assets
Largest grants
- ERIE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION VOLUNTEER LAWYERS PROJECT$629,636
- LEGAL AID BUREAU OF BUFFALO INC$625,816
- CENTER FOR ELDER LAW AND JUSTICE INC$625,471
- WNY LAW CENTER$598,114
- BELMONT HOUSING RESOURCES WNY$573,000
- THE RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK$130,117
- VIA VISUALLY IMPAIRED ADVANCEMENT$86,887
- ERIE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION VOLUNTEER LAWYERS PROJECT$42,000
- CIVIL JUSTICE INC$32,500
- WNY LAW CENTER$19,865
- EVERGREEN HEALTH SERVICES$19,106
- VIA EVALUATION$10,830
- UB CENTER FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH - ITTIC$8,665
- CRISIS SERVICES$6,851
02The need
04
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.
show:
Your human-services grants (FY18–24, $155k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14% — the area typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars reach neighborhoods with above-average need. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
grant to an above-average-need area below average· circle size = grant amount
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty line in 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, United Way ALICE — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
03Your edge
repeat funding
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.
92%of every dollar goes to organizations you’ve funded before.
$6.9M · 14 repeat orgs$608k to everyone else
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +101% since the first grant, against -10% for the ones you funded once.
14 repeat relationships — 11 still active in FY2024, 3 since wound down; 1 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Re-uppedFunded once
Organizations
14
2
Total granted
$6.9M
$35k
Median revenue growth · since first grant
+101%
-10%
Still filing today
86%
50%
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 83% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $573k went to new ones.
RenewedFirst-time
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
Crime & LegalHuman ServicesHealthHousing & ShelterEducationOther
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
- ECERIE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION VOLUNTEER LAWYERS PROJECT8× · 2017–2024 · $1.8M · revenue +149%
- WLWNY LAW CENTER3× · 2022–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +85%
- CFCENTER FOR ELDER LAW AND JUSTICE INC3× · 2022–2024 · $1.4M · revenue +125%
Funded once
- CACHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES OF ERIE COUNTYone grant, 2018 · $29k · revenue -10%
- JRJUST ROOTS CONSULTINGone grant, 2021 · $6k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
04Your field
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.
1
Legal Services of Central New York Inc
Legal services of central new york (lscny)is a 501c3 non-profit law firm that helps people and communities in central new york change law, policy, and systems to promote equity and create pathways out of poverty for low-income families and…
Crime & Legal
2
Genesee County Legal Aid Society
To provide legal services for those unable to afford legal assistance
—
3
Prisoners' Legal Services of New York
To provide high quality, effective legal representation and assistance to indigent prisoners, to help them to secure their civil and human rights, and to advocate for more humane prisons and for a more humane criminal justice system.
—
4
Rural Law Center of New York Inc
The rural law center of new york is an organization that is dedicated to identifying and addressing the legal issues unique to low-income, rural new yorkers.
Crime & Legal
5
Disability Advocates Inc
Provide legal assistance, information, referral and advocacy.drny is the designated protection and advocacy system for persons with disabilities in new york.
Public Safety & Disaster
6
Lakeshore Legal Aid
Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.
Crime & Legal
7
Volunteer Lawyers Project of Cny Inc
Providing access to justice through engaging the legal community in volunteer service to those in need.
Crime & Legal
8
The Legal Aid Society of
Advocates for justice and equal treatment under the law, providing constitutionally mandated legal representation to persons financially unable to hire counsel.
—
9
Worker Justice Center of New York Inc
Provides legal assistance to farmworkers and other low wage workers in New York State.
Crime & Legal
10
Legal Services Nyc
Legal services nyc is a non-profit organization that provides free civil legal assistance to low-income people in new york city. a community-based organization serving more than 100,000 people annually, lsnyc is the nation's largest…
Crime & Legal
11
Federal Defenders of New York Inc
The organization provides representation and related defense services to indigent persons charged with federal crimes.
Crime & Legal
12
Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York Inc
We are a not-for-profit law office whose primary purpose is to provide legal assistance in civil proceedings on matters to persons financially unable to afford legal assistance in oneida county and surrounding counties.
Crime & Legal
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Center for Elder Law & Justice Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Research Foundation for the State University of New York. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
05the grantee network
14 grantees, every filing reconciled, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue.
0
Load-bearing (≥25% of a budget)
4
Early backer (in before they grew)
14/14
Grantees still filing
13/14
Grew since you first funded
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Crime & Legal$6,201,229Housing & Shelter$573,000Other$237,481Education$231,579Human Services$154,647Health$124,217
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 ERIE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION VOLUNTEER LAWYERS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds WNY LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds CENTER FOR ELDER LAW AND JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID BUREAU OF BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds BELMONT HOUSING RESOURCES WNY ↗
- Who funds THE RESEARCH FOUNDATION OF SUNY ↗
- Who funds VIA VISUALLY IMPAIRED ADVANCEMENT ↗
- Who funds EVERGREEN HEALTH SERVICES ↗
- Who funds STARBRIDGE SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL ASSISTANCE OF WNY ↗
- Who funds CIVIL JUSTICE INC ↗
- Who funds SOUTHWESTERN INDEPENDENT LIVING CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES OF ERIE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds SUICIDE PREVENTION CRISIS SERVICES 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.
Community Foundation for Greater BuffaloNY23.9× affinity9 shared granteesties to 5 of 5Hover any node to trace its alignments.Compare side by side →
Open a dossier: Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo · The New York Bar Foundation · United Way of Buffalo and Erie County · The John R Oishei Foundation · Mother Cabrini Health Foundation Inc · 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 organisation NEIGHBORHOOD LEGAL SERVICES INC 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.
2024
’20’21’22’23’24
- Civil Justice Inc — 23% of income from government
no gov moneyreceives it· size = income
0get no government money at all
0rely on government for over half their income
⤢ axis zoomed · 0–50%
typical government reliance, FY20–24
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. 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.
05Through Plinth
Through Plinth
Your grantmaking, live and operational
This dossier was generated cold from public filings. In Plinth it’s a working system — every applicant assessed and every grant monitored. Here’s a taste, run on one of your grantees: WNY LAW CENTER.
Agentic due diligence · confidence × risk
Financial management
high risk
~1 months of operating runway; revenue grew over 8 filed years.
Track record & reputation
low risk
8 years of Form 990 filings, still active; revenue up +85% since.
Legal standing
low risk
US 501(c)(3); EIN 161497552 on file with current IRS Form 990 filings.
Governance
Live in Plinth
Board composition & governance documents — verified live in Plinth from the applicant.
Compliance & sanctions
Live in Plinth
OFAC / UN sanctions screening — run live in Plinth at assessment.
Program capacity
Live in Plinth
Staffing, M&E and activity alignment — assessed live in Plinth from submitted proposals.
Live · Plinth’s real DD engine
Run the actual assessment on WNY LAW CENTER, cold from public data.
Generated live from public IRS filings + open web sources by Plinth’s agentic engine. Shown as an illustration of the product, not a formal assessment.
Post-award monitoring · continuous checks
- FlagFinancial stability— Roughly 1 months of cash on hand.
- On trackSustained operations— Filing through 2024; revenue grew over the period.
- On trackReliance on your funding— Your grants peaked at 14% of their budget — diversified.
- Awaiting reportEvidence of delivery— Plinth collects the grantee's own monitoring reports post-award.
What you see here is static and public. In Plinth it’s operational — the full six-pillar framework on every applicant (with their own documents + live registry and sanctions checks), monitoring dashboards on every award, custom board reports, and eligibility routing for intake.
Agentic due diligenceMonitoring dashboardsCustom board reportsEligibility routing
Preview generated from this grantee’s public IRS filings and independent reporting. Pillars marked “live in Plinth” require the applicant’s submitted documents. Shown as illustration, not a formal assessment.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPro
How do I get to Neighborhood Legal Services Inc?
Find your warmest path to Neighborhood Legal Services Inc through people who sit on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the introduction across shared trustees and officers.
Every link is a documented governance overlap in public IRS 990 filings — not a personal network — and each hop carries its own confidence tier. Low-confidence or distant paths are held back rather than guessed.
More from the funding graph
The regranting layer
51% of grant dollars pass through an intermediary
The DAF merry-go-round
$9.7B circulates between donor-advised funds
Strange bedfellows
the named clusters of US funding
The camps
funders cluster by geography, not ideology
By state
where grant money is based, and what stays home
State money flows
the interactive map of money crossing state lines