· Private foundation
Poor Richard's Charitable Trust
Its FY2024 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 FY2020–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k3 grants · $15k
- $10k–50k16 grants · $376k
- $50k–250k13 grants · $1.3M
- $250k+3 grants · $1.4M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART | $859,000 |
| CENTER FOR ARCHITECTURE DESIGN | $250,000 |
| CENTER CITY DISTRICT FOUNDATION | $250,000 |
| SPOTLIGHT PA | $225,000 |
| GERMINATION PROJECT | $150,000 |
| TINY WPA | $125,000 |
| CRAFTNOW | $120,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA SOCCER 2026 | $100,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA YOUTH SPORTS COLLABORATIVE (PYSC) | $100,000 |
| TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | $100,000 |
| COOPER HEWITT SMITHSONIAN DESIGN MUSEUM | $85,000 |
| STARFINDER FOUNDATION | $75,000 |
| PHILADELPHIA VISITOR CENTER | $75,000 |
| SHARE FOOD PROGRAM | $50,000 |
| THE ATHENAEUM OF PHILADELPHIA | $50,000 |
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 (FY20–24, $715k) land where the poverty rate runs at 19%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 84% 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 +35% since the first grant, against +14% for the ones you funded once.
45 repeat relationships — 26 still active in FY2024, 19 since wound down; 6 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, 88% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $335k 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
- PMPHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART5× · 2020–2024 · $4.4M · revenue +14%
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION4× · 2021–2024 · $714k · revenue +8%- CCCENTER CITY DISTRICT FOUNDATION5× · 2020–2024 · $548k · revenue +493%
Funded once
- CHCOOPER HEWITT SMITHSONIAN DESIGN MUSEUMone grant, 2020 · $200k
- PYPHILA YOUTH SPORTS COLLABORATIVEone grant, 2020 · $185k
- LILENFEST INSTITTUTE OF JOURNALISMone grant, 2021 · $150k
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 philadelphia convention & visitors bureau (phlcvb) is the official tourism promotion agency for the city of philadelphia globally, and the sales and marketing agency for the pennsylvania convention center (pcc). phlcvb markets…
Pidc plans and implements economic development initiatives (see schedule o) which enhance the competitive environment, generate jobs and produce higher tax ratables throughout philadelphia.
The chamber of commerce for greater philadelphia (the chamber) brings area businesses and civic leaders together to promote growth and create opportunity in our region. our members represent eleven counties, three states, and roughly…
Whyy is the philadelphia region's leading public media provider, serving southeastern pennsylvania, southern new jersey, and all of delaware.
Public Trust is a non-profit organization on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania that fosters learning, creativity, and collaboration in support of justice and equality.
We connect the people and places of philadelphia through art and partnership. the organization is a free-standing platform that endeavors to show forward-thinking, high-quality contemporary visual and performance art in the city. the…
Phillycam provides transformative opportunities for people and communities to express themselves, to learn from each other, and to produce and share media reflective of the experiences of everyday people.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and the most unlike its peers is The Satell Institute. 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 15. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 22% startups (under 5 years old) — 0% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 14% 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.
53 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. 53 of the 81 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 PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART ↗
- Who funds SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ↗
- Who funds Starfinder Foundation ↗
- Who funds CENTER CITY DISTRICT FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds ABORTION LIBERATION FUND OF PA ↗
- Who funds GERMINATION PROJECT ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA YOUTH SPORTS COLLABORATIVE ↗
- Who funds SPOTLIGHT PA ↗
- Who funds FRINGEARTS ↗
- Who funds NEIGHBORHOOD GARDENS TRUST ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds HOPEPHL ↗
- Who funds READING TERMINAL MARKET CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds FREE LIBRARY OF PHILADELPHIA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SCHUYLKILL RIVER DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds TINY WPA ↗
- Who funds THE ATHENAEUM OF PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA UNION FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds DREXEL UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds PHILADELPHIA SOCCER 2026 ↗
- Who funds THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds SHARE FOOD PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds PRESERVATION ALLIANCE FOR GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
- Who funds STEPPINGSTONE SCHOLARS INC ↗
- Who funds Philabundance ↗
- Who funds URBAN CREATORS ↗
- Who funds JEWISH FEDERATION OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA ↗
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 William Penn Foundation · The Philadelphia Foundation · Henry Dolfinger 2 Trust Uw · Independence Foundation · The Barra Foundation Inc · Connelly Foundation · The Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation · Future Standard Foundation · Lindback Cr & Mf Foundation Tw Main · The Patricia Kind Family Foundation · The Philadelphia Cultural Fund Inc · United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey
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 Poor Richard's Charitable Trust 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 Poor Richard's Charitable Trust?
Find your warmest path to Poor Richard's Charitable Trust 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.