· Public charity
Ohio Humanities Council
The OHIO HUMANITIES COUNCIL is a not-for-profit whose principal business activity is to encourage ohioans to use history, literature, philosophy, and other humanities disciplines to gain new insights, explore new ideas, and develop respect for new perspectives.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 14 grants below total $212,500 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $311,134 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $98,634 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 |
|---|---|
| CANTON MUSEUM OF ART | $17,500 |
| SOUTHERN OHIO FOLKLIFE | $17,500 |
| NATIONAL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD FREEDOM CENTER | $17,500 |
| VOYAGEUR MEDIA GROUP | $17,500 |
| GREATER CLEVELAND URBAN FILM FOUNDATION | $15,000 |
| URBAN APPALACHIAN COMMUNITY COALITION | $15,000 |
| ROBERT O'NEAL MULTICULTURAL ARTS CENTER | $15,000 |
| TOLEDO OPERA ASSOCIATION | $15,000 |
| CORPORATION FOR FINDLAY MARKET | $15,000 |
| DECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO | $15,000 |
| COLUMBUS METROPOLITAN LIBRARY | $15,000 |
| MANDEL JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER | $15,000 |
| FORT RECOVERY HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $12,500 |
| THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA | $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 (FY17–24, $166k) land where the poverty rate runs at 17%, 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +49% since the first grant, against +33% for the ones you funded once.
69 repeat relationships — 10 still active in FY2024, 59 since wound down; 4 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, 73% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $58k 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
- TMThe Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland7× · 2017–2024 · $103k · revenue +16%
- DADECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO4× · 2020–2024 · $69k · revenue +70%
- CRCLEVELAND RESTORATION SOCIETY INC3× · 2017–2021 · $61k · revenue +226%
Funded once
- LBLESBIANS BENEFITTING THE ARTS INCone grant, 2023 · $25k
- MFMac-A-Cheek Foundations for the Humanitiesone grant, 2021 · $23k
- PCPREBLE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INCgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $23k · revenue +655%
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.
Museum
Non profit historical society
Western reserve historical society preserves and uses its collections, historic sites, and museums to inspire people to discover the american experience by exploring the tangible history of northeast ohio.
The wayne county historical society is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of wayne county.
To facilitate the collection, preservation and education of the jewish history of central ohio.
To preserve and present the history of warren county and southwest ohio.
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,…
The Granville Historical Society acquires, preserves, and shares Granvilles past with residents and visitors to inspire curiosity about, instill knowledge of, and foster a commitment to our history.
To provide a repository for historical artifacts for middletown, ohio and to make these available for the membership and the general public
To discover, to collect, to preserve and to interpret materials and objects germane to the history of Cleveland and the North Shore of Oneida Lake, NY, to sponsor writings, education, publications, and to promote public interest in…
To preserve the history of ashland county, ohio, and to provide educational opportunities to read about and experience said history and heritage.
Preserve historical items in paulding county, ohio
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Lorain County Historical Society Inc and the most unlike its peers is American Society of Ephesus 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 37 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 1% lost their exemption, against 12% 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.
154 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2026.
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 2017–2026, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 154 of the 196 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 Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland ↗
- Who funds OHIOANA LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds DECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO ↗
- Who funds SPRINGFIELD MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND RESTORATION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds VOYAGEUR MEDIA GROUP INC ↗
- Who funds MIDSTORY ↗
- Who funds BOOKS BY THE BANKS ↗
- Who funds Greater Dayton Public Television dba Think TV ↗
- Who funds Allen County Historical Society ↗
- Who funds Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House ↗
- Who funds TOLEDO OPERA ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education ↗
- Who funds MARION COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds TRUMBULL COUNTY HISTORICAL SOC ↗
- Who funds RUTHERFORD B HAYES PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUMS ↗
- Who funds ATHENS COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds OVER-THE-RHINE MUSEUM ↗
- Who funds WOOD COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL MEDICAL CENTER OF AKRON ↗
- Who funds Media Working Group ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI MUSEUM ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S AIR & SPACE MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds Marion Voices Folklife & Oral History ↗
- Who funds American Society of Ephesus Inc ↗
- Who funds OBERLIN HISTORICAL AND IMPROVEMENT ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER ↗
- Who funds Canton Museum of Art ↗
- Who funds THE DICK AND JANE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL FIRST LADIES LIBRARY ↗
- Who funds WESTCOTT HOUSE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds HIGHLAND COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds FEVERED DREAMS PRODUCTIONS ↗
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: Ohio History Connection · The Cleveland Foundation · Carol Ann and Ralph V Haile Jr Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · Louise Taft Semple Foundation · Columbus Foundation · Stark Community Foundation · W E Smith Family Charitable Trust Fund · The George Gund Foundation · The Dayton Foundation · Park National Corporation Foundation · Martha Holden Jennings 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 Ohio Humanities Council 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.