· Public charity
Ohio Access to Justice Foundation
The Foundation is a nonprofit Ohio foundation committed to improving access to justice and ensuring that Ohioans who are low-income or who lack access can fully and fairly participate in civil systems that produce just outcomes.
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.
The 21 grants below total $11,546,015 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $11,855,446 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $309,431 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.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k1 grant · $7k
- $50k–250k5 grants · $698k
- $250k+15 grants · $11M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Advocates for Basic Legal Equality | $1,723,305 |
| Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio | $1,481,925 |
| Ohio Legal Help | $1,092,900 |
| Catholic Charities Corp | $1,019,973 |
| Legal Aid Society of Cleveland | $931,593 |
| US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants | $880,069 |
| Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati | $528,134 |
| Community Refugee and Immigration Services Inc | $485,051 |
| Catholic Charities of Southwest Ohio | $471,025 |
| Community Legal Aid | $465,345 |
| International Institute of Akron | $439,721 |
| US Together Inc | $411,299 |
| Pro Seniors | $376,565 |
| Fair Housing Opportunities of Northwest Ohio | $276,360 |
| Equality Ohio Education Fund | $258,250 |
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, $7.2M) land where the poverty rate runs at 15%, against an area that typically sits at 14%. 85% 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 +77% since the first grant, against +3% for the ones you funded once.
24 repeat relationships — 20 still active in FY2025, 4 since wound down; 1 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $276k 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
- AFADVOCATES FOR BASIC LEGAL EQUALITY INC8× · 2017–2025 · $13M · revenue +83% · 26% of their budget
- LALEGAL AID OF SOUTHEAST AND CENTRAL OHIO8× · 2017–2025 · $12M · revenue +165% · 31% of their budget
- LALEGAL AID SOCIETY OF CLEVELAND8× · 2017–2025 · $7.0M · revenue +134%
Funded once
- GDGREATER DAYTON VOLUNTEER LAWYERS PROJECTone grant, 2023 · $51k · revenue +5%
- VCVineyard Community Centerone grant, 2022 · $14k · revenue -37%
- OSOHIO STATE BAR ASSOCIATIONone grant, 2024 · $11k · revenue -8%
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.
Toledo Legal Aid Society provides legal representation for indigent clients that are charged with criminal, traffic, or juvenile offenses for which the penalty or any possible adjudication includes the potential loss of liberty.
The mission of Ohio Crime Victim Justice Center (OCVJC) is to ensure that the constitutional and statutory rights of Ohio crime victims are protected and enforced in state and federal jurisdictions in all 88 Ohio counties. To fulfill this…
Standing with our neighbors, Lakeshore Legal Aid fights poverty and injustice through advocacy and by providing meaningful and dignified access to the legal system.
The Central Ohio Worker Center is a non-profit organization that educates, empowers, and advocates for and with low-wage and immigrant workers in Central Ohio.
Aclu of ohio foundation leverages advocacy, litigation, and public education to champion fairness, freedom and justice for all as guaranteed under the constitution and the laws of the u.s.
To provide legal representation to indigent persons for the citizens of Summit County, Ohio.
The primary purpose of legal aid services of oregon shall be to achieve justice for the low-income communities of oregon by providing a full range of the highest quality civil legal services.
To provide meaningful access to high quality, civil legal services in the pursuit of justice for as many low income persons and members of vulnerable populations throughout colorado as possible.
To promote professional excellence, foster justice, serve our members and educate the public.
At legal aid chicago, we work together to provide high quality civil legal aid to people living in poverty and other vulnerable groups.through advocacy, education, collaboration, and litigation we empower individuals, protect fundamental…
Legal aid of east tennessee provides legal representation, legal education, and other civil legal services for the low-income population in our community through advocacy of all types.
To strengthen the capacity of United Ways across Ohio and to advance the common good for Ohioans.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio and the most unlike its peers is Us Together 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 41 years old; the field is 21. 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 — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 13% 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.
28 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. 28 of the 30 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 ADVOCATES FOR BASIC LEGAL EQUALITY INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID OF SOUTHEAST AND CENTRAL OHIO ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds Legal Aid Society of Cincinnati ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY LEGAL AID SERVICES ↗
- Who funds OHIO LEGAL HELP ↗
- Who funds Pro Seniors Inc ↗
- Who funds CATHOLIC CHARITIES CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY OF COLUMBUS ↗
- Who funds US COMMITTEE FOR REFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL AID OF WESTERN OHIO INC ↗
- Who funds INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF AKRON INC ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY REFUGEE & IMMIGRATION SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds Equality Ohio Education Fund ↗
- Who funds US TOGETHER INC ↗
- Who funds ASIAN SERVICES IN ACTION INC ↗
- Who funds LEGAL WORKS INC ↗
- Who funds FAIR HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES OF NORTHWEST OHIO INC ↗
- Who funds SOCIAL SERVICES FOR THE ARAB COMMUNITY ↗
- Who funds OHIO JUSTICE AND POLICY CENTER ↗
- Who funds TOLEDO BAR ASSOCIATION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds NUEVA LUZ URBAN RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds AO ADVOCATING OPPORTUNITY INC ↗
- Who funds GREATER DAYTON VOLUNTEER LAWYERS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND METROPOLITAN BAR FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Vineyard Community Center ↗
- Who funds OHIO STATE BAR ASSOCIATION ↗
- Who funds OHIO DISABILITY RIGHTS LAW & POLICY CENTER 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: Ohio State Bar Foundation · Columbus Foundation · The George Gund Foundation · Toledo Community Foundation Inc · The Cleveland Foundation · American College of Bankruptcy Foundation · Equal Justice Works · United Way of Central Ohio Inc · Ohio Voice · Legal Services Corporation · United Way of Greater Toledo · Akron Community 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 Access to Justice 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.