· Public charity
Philadelphia Bar Foundation
Promoting equal access to justice for all members of the community by strengthening the legal services system through unrestricted operating grants and technical assistance to legal aid non profits.
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 $503,099 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $597,601 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $94,502 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 $10k7 grants · $49k
- $10k–50k13 grants · $312k
- $50k–250k1 grant · $143k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PHILADELPHIA EQUAL JUSTICE CENTER INC | $142,599 |
| COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES OF PHILADELPHIA | $47,000 |
| JUSTICE AT WORK | $38,000 |
| PENNSYLVANIA HIAS INDIGENT IMMIGRANT LEGAL SERVICES INC | $37,000 |
| NATIONALITIES SERVICE CENTER | $34,250 |
| PHILADELPHIA VIP | $30,750 |
| PENNSYLVANIA INNOCENCE PROJECT TEMPLE UNIVERSITY CENTER CITY | $28,500 |
| PENNSYLVANIA IMMIGRATION RESOURCE CENTER | $19,250 |
| SUPPORT CENTER FOR CHILD ADVOCATES | $15,250 |
| SENIORLAW CENTER | $14,500 |
| DISABILITY RIGHTS PENNSYLVANIA | $14,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA LEGAL ASSISTANCE | $12,500 |
| HOMELESS ADVOCACY PROJECT | $10,500 |
| WOMEN'S LAW PROJECT | $10,500 |
| EDUCATION LAW CENTER | $8,500 |
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, $335k) land where the poverty rate runs at 22%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 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 +71% since the first grant, against +33% for the ones you funded once.
40 repeat relationships — 21 still active in FY2025, 19 since wound down.
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, 100% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $0 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
COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES INC9× · 2017–2025 · $708k · revenue +130%
PHILADELPHIA VIP INC9× · 2017–2025 · $368k · revenue +99%- PLPHILADELPHIA LEGAL ASSISTANCE CENTER INC C/O THE ORGANIZATION9× · 2017–2025 · $208k · revenue +186%
Funded once
- WAWOMEN AGAINST ABUSE LEGAL CENTERgraduatedone grant, 2023 · $79k · revenue +33%
PHILADELPHIA VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTSone grant, 2023 · $45k · revenue -52%- CPCEASEFIRE PENNSYLVANIAone grant, 2023 · $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.
Building support for the rights of working people through coalitions of labor and community and through public education.
To provide high quality civil legal assistance and other services to indigent individuals and families.
Midpenn legal services is a non-profit, public interest law firm dedicated to providing equal access to justice and high quality civil legal services to low income residents and survivors of domestic violence in 18 counties in central…
The legal aid justice center partners with communities and clients to achieve justice by dismantling systems that create and perpetuate poverty.
Amistad law project's mission is to fight for the human rights of people in our community by providing free and low-cost legal services to philadelphians and those incarcerated in pennsylvania's prisons. additionally, we advocate for laws…
To create a culture of inclusion and highlight diversity successes and initiatives in the pittsburgh legal community; and to educate and assist pittsburgh area legal employers in increasing the hiring, retention, and inclusion of legal…
To solve civil legal problems and empower vulnerable populations through professional legal representation, advocacy, and education.
To provide civil legal services to women in crisis.
It is the mission of the pennsylvania district attorneys association to assist the membership in the pursuit of justice and in all matters relating to the execution of their duties; advocate the position of the association to the…
Promoting equal access to justice for all members of the community by strengthening the legal services system through unrestricted operating grants and technical assistance to legal aid non profits.
Civil justice for those in need, their homes secured, families protected, and finances fortified.
The mission statement of neighborhood legal services association is to meet the civil legal needs of the poor and vulnerable in our community through effective legal representation and education.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Philadelphia Legal Assistance Center Inc C/O the Organization and the most unlike its peers is Good Shepherd Corporation. 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 37 years old; the field is 14. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 23% 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 16% 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.
43 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. 43 of the 44 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 COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES INC ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA VIP INC ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA EQUAL JUSTICE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA LEGAL ASSISTANCE CENTER INC C/O THE ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF FARMWORKERS INC ↗
- Who funds SENIORLAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds Support Center for Child Advocates ↗
- Who funds HOMELESS ADVOCACY PROJECT ↗
- Who funds WOMEN'S LAW PROJECT ↗
- Who funds AIDS LAW PROJECT OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds Education Law Center - PA ↗
- Who funds CONSUMER BANKRUPTCY ASSISTANCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds NATIONALITIES SERVICE CENTER OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds Pennsylvania HIAS Indigent Immigrant Legal Services ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA HEALTH LAW PROJECT ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA IMMIGRATION RESOURCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds WOMEN AGAINST ABUSE LEGAL CENTER ↗
- Who funds MAZZONI CENTER ↗
- Who funds REGIONAL HOUSING LEGAL SERVICES ↗
- Who funds THE PUBLIC INTEREST LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds DISABILITY RIGHTS OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds HIAS and Council Migration Service of Philadelphia Inc ↗
- Who funds JUVENILE LAW CENTER ↗
- Who funds PENNSYLVANIA INSTITUTIONAL LAW PROJECT ↗
- Who funds LEGAL CLINIC FOR THE DISABLED ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS ↗
- Who funds THE PENNSYLVANIA INNOCENCE PROJECT ↗
- Who funds FACE TO FACE INC ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES FOUNDATION OF PENNSYLVANIA INC ↗
- Who funds WOMEN AGAINST ABUSE INC ↗
- Who funds Esperanza Immigration Legal Services ↗
- Who funds CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FOR GREATER PHILADELPHIA REGIONAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CASA OF PHILADELPHIA COUNTY ↗
- Who funds CEASEFIRE PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds Nueva Esperanza Inc ↗
- Who funds YOUTH SENTENCING & REENTRY PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds WOAR PHILADELPHIA CENTER AGAINST SEXUAL VIOLENCE ↗
- Who funds DEFENDER ASSOCIATION OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds Texas Defender Service ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA LAWYERS FOR SOCIAL EQUITY ↗
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: Independence Foundation · The Philadelphia Foundation · Pennsylvania Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts Board · United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey · The William Penn Foundation · Claneil Foundation Inc · Henry Dolfinger 2 Trust Uw · The Heinz Endowments · Henrietta Tower Wurts Memorial Foundation · The Pittsburgh Foundation · Union Benevolent Association · Van Ameringen Foundation Inc
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 Philadelphia Bar 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.