· Private foundation
Richard L and Virginia M Fischer 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 FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k26 grants · $46k
- $10k–50k2 grants · $21k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| CATHOLIC CHARITIES DIOCESE OF PITTSBURGH | $11,000 |
| UNITED WAY OF SOUTHWESTERN PA | $10,000 |
| GREATER PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FOOD BANK | $7,000 |
| SALVATION ARMY | $6,000 |
| FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS | $6,000 |
| THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM | $5,000 |
| CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES | $5,000 |
| Individual grant recipient | $4,800 |
| LIGHT OF LIFE RESCUE MISSION | $2,600 |
| SAINT PAUL CATHEDRAL KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS | $1,000 |
| PRESTO VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT | $1,000 |
| HOSPICE OF THE WESTERN RESERVE | $1,000 |
| PROJECT BUNDLE UP | $1,000 |
| ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL | $1,000 |
| STEPHEN SILLER TUNNEL TO TOWERS FOUNDATION | $1,000 |
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 (FY21–25, $20k) land where the poverty rate runs at 12%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 74% 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.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +31% since the first grant, against +1% for the ones you funded once.
19 repeat relationships — 7 still active in FY2025, 12 since wound down; 20 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, 40% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $34k 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
- PCPITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST4× · 2017–2022 · $13k · revenue +41%
- RRIVERLIFE3× · 2017–2019 · $10k · revenue +195%
- GPGREATER PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FOOD BANK2× · 2024–2025 · $9k · revenue +11%
Funded once
- MWMount Washington Community Development Corporationgraduatedone grant, 2020 · $21k · revenue +34%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2021 · $12k
- WPWESTERN PA CONSERVANCYone grant, 2020 · $10k
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.
Project drawdown's mission is to drive meaningful climate action by advancing science-based solutions and strategies. project drawdown's work is focused on three pillars: science - advancing science-based climate solutions and strategies;…
Wwf's mission is to conserve nature and reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth. (continued on schedule o)
To engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming.
Usp's mission is to improve global health through public standards and related programs that help ensure the quality, safety, and benefit of medicines and foods.
Ci works to spotlight and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
The children's hospital of philadelphia, the oldest hospital in the united states dedicated exclusively to pediatrics, strives to be the world leader in the advancement of health care for children by integrating excellent patient care,…
Iatp works locally and globally at the intersection of policy and practice to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems.
The mission of lowell observatory is to pursue the study of astronomy, especially the study of our solar system and its evolution; to conduct pure research in astronomical phenomena; and to maintain quality public education and outreach…
The council on foreign relations (cfr) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials, business executives, journalists, educators and…
To research and develop centrist policy ideas.
Ocean conservancy unites science, people, and policy to protect our ocean, today and for generations to come.
Poptech's mission is to accelerate the positive impact of world-changing people, projects and ideas. founded in 1996 by bob metcalfe (inventor, ethernet) and john sculley (apple, pepsi), poptech originally provided a forum to critically…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Feed the Children Inc and the most unlike its peers is The National World War Ii Museum 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 47 years old; the field is 19. 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.
34 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. 34 of the 76 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 UNITED WAY OF SOUTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA ↗
- Who funds Mount Washington Community Development Corporation ↗
- Who funds PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST ↗
- Who funds RIVERLIFE ↗
- Who funds GREATER PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY FOOD BANK ↗
- Who funds LIGHT OF LIFE MINISTRIES INC ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF THE WORLD FOOD PROGRAM INC ↗
- Who funds THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR II MUSEUM INC ↗
- Who funds Catholic Charities Diocese of Charlotte ↗
- Who funds COMMUNITY KITCHEN PITTSBURGH ↗
- Who funds Presto Volunteer Fire Department ↗
- Who funds ST JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL INC ↗
- Who funds FEED THE CHILDREN INC ↗
- Who funds CRAZY HORSE MEMORIAL FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Feeding America ↗
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: Richard King Mellon Foundation · Hillman Family Foundations · C F Holdship Charitable Trust · The Pittsburgh Foundation · American Endowment Foundation · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · National Philanthropic Trust · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · Amazonsmile 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 Richard L and Virginia M Fischer 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.
- Feed the Children Inc — 1% of income from government
- Americares Foundation Inc — 0% of income from government
- Shriners Hospitals for Children — 0% 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.
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How do I get to Richard L and Virginia M Fischer Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Richard L and Virginia M Fischer 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.