· Private foundation
Red Top Foundation
Its FY2025 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 FY2021–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k68 grants · $134k
- $10k–50k4 grants · $50k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NICHOLS SCHOOL | $15,000 |
| BUFFALO PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA | $14,469 |
| BUFFALO PREP | $11,000 |
| TAPESTRY CHARTER SCHOOL | $10,000 |
| BUFFALO CITY MISSION | $9,000 |
| WESTERN NEW YORK WOMEN'S FUND | $7,200 |
| WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $6,600 |
| ALBRIGHT-KNOX ART GALLERY | $6,000 |
| PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF WNY | $5,500 |
| ORCHARD PARK PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH | $5,000 |
| GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY | $5,000 |
| YALE UNIVERSITY ALUMNI FUND | $5,000 |
| BISON FUND | $4,200 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $4,000 |
| NATURE CONSERVANCY | $4,000 |
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 (FY21–24, $55k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 99% 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.
Which US states your grants reach
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.
72 repeat relationships — 64 still active in FY2024, 8 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, 98% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $4k 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
BUFFALO PREP INC4× · 2021–2024 · $44k · revenue +49%- TCTAPESTRY CHARTER SCHOOL4× · 2021–2024 · $31k · revenue +7%
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY4× · 2021–2024 · $13k · revenue +34%
Funded once
- NPNet Positive Incgraduatedone grant, 2022 · $5k · revenue +212%
- RPROSWELL PARK FOUNDATIONone grant, 2022 · $5k
- TTTHE TEACHERS DESK INCone grant, 2022 · $5k · 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.
To acquire, remediate, and steward lands along wny's waterfronts prioritizing public access.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
New york school of interior design provides the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world, demonstrating the impact of professionally designed interiors on the health, happiness, and well-being…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
Zoo new york, by example and action, provides knowledge and motivation for conserving nature in new york state through science-based natural and cultural experiences.
The organization's exempt purpose is to promote and cultivate the quality of education and activities for students of the state university of new york at buffalo. the organization carries out those charitable and educational purposes by…
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
To attract new employers to the buffalo niagara region through outreach to growing companies around the world. to support business attraction, expansion and entrepreneurship, invest buffalo niagara collaborates with local businesses,…
University at buffalo neurosurgery, inc. is an academic neurosurgical group committed to excellence in patient care, research, and education. our mission is to develop and implement sound strategies that focus on quality medical services,…
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
Niagara university educates its students and enriches their lives through programs in the liberal arts and through career preparation, informed by the catholic and vincentian traditions.
Provide clinical instruction to and supervision of medical school students, interns and residents and, incident thereto, rendering professional services.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Buffalo State College Foundation Inc and the most unlike its peers is The Foundation Fighting Blindness Inc. 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 21. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 18% 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 9% 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.
46 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. 46 of the 89 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 NICHOLS SCHOOL OF BUFFALO ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO PREP INC ↗
- Who funds CITY MISSION SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds TAPESTRY CHARTER SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO FINE ARTS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds President and Fellows of Harvard College ↗
- Who funds THE COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR THE GREATER CAPITAL REGION INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATURE CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO STATE COLLEGE FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds Torn Space Theater Inc ↗
- Who funds IRISH CLASSICAL THEATER CO ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCES ↗
- Who funds JUST BUFFALO LITERARY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds KALEIDA HEALTH ↗
- Who funds CANISIUS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO & ERIE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO NIAGARA WATERKEEPER INC ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FIGHTING BLINDNESS INC ↗
- Who funds ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds St John's School ↗
- Who funds NATIONAL OUTDOOR LEADERSHIP SCHOOL ↗
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: Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Inc · Cullen Foundation · The Baird Foundation · Cullen Foundation of Western New York Inc · The Margaret L Wendt Foundation · Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies Inc · The Western New York Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation · First Niagara Foundation · The John R Oishei Foundation · The Frank G Raichle Foundation · James H Cummings 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 Red Top 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.
- President and Fellows of Harvard College — 7% of income from government
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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Red Top Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Red Top Foundation 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.