· Private foundation
Ross Family Foundation
Its FY2024 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
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 $10k22 grants · $82k
- $10k–50k42 grants · $771k
- $50k–250k4 grants · $470k
- $250k+5 grants · $3.2M
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| DE SMET JESUIT HIGH SCHOOL | $1,285,000 |
| CARDINAL GLENNON CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION | $1,000,000 |
| BARNES-JEWISH HOSPITAL FOUNDATION | $350,000 |
| ST LOUIS UNIVERSITY | $270,000 |
| ST LOUIS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL | $250,000 |
| ST LOUIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA | $145,000 |
| STAGES ST LOUIS | $125,000 |
| ARCHDIOCESE OF ST LOUIS | $100,000 |
| RUNG FOUNDATION INC | $100,000 |
| TEAM ACTIVITIES FOR SPECIAL KIDS INC | $35,000 |
| STE GENEVIEVE DU BOIS CHURCH | $32,000 |
| GO TO NATIONS | $32,000 |
| HUMANE SOCIETY OF MISSOURI | $30,000 |
| AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY INC | $30,000 |
| BOYS HOPE GIRLS HOPE | $30,000 |
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, $814k) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 69% 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.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 16% of Ross Family Foundation’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 98% of the giving stays in MO; read by stated purpose it is 79% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
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 +42% since the first grant, against +4% for the ones you funded once.
67 repeat relationships — 54 still active in FY2024, 13 since wound down; 17 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, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $433k 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
- CGCARDINAL GLENNON CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION2× · 2021–2024 · $1.5M · revenue +72%
- SSSTAGES ST LOUIS5× · 2020–2024 · $1.3M · revenue +91% · 40% of their budget
- MBMISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BOARD OF TRUSTEES5× · 2020–2024 · $1.1M · revenue +42%
Funded once
- UPUNLIMITED PLAY INCone grant, 2023 · $225k · revenue -20%
- SMST MARY & ST LOUIS ABBEYone grant, 2020 · $30k
- WAWreaths Across Americagraduatedone grant, 2021 · $25k · revenue +91%
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 promote the possibilities of charitable giving, helping charitable citizens understand how they can effectively provide for the community they love and the causes they care deeply about.
Mission: st. louis empowers individuals for social and economic growth through relationships and opportunity.
The missouri western state university foundation is a not-for-profit charitable organization that functions solely to support the mission of missouri western state university, as stated in the university's mission statement. the foundation…
Mercy Health will provide assistance, support and direction to all of the health care institutions and activities operated and maintained by its Subsidiaries. The mission of Mercy Health in performing these activities shall be to provide a…
St. Luke's Health Foundation is a not-for-profit organization established to develop philanthropic resources that support St. Luke's mission "To improve the health of people in the communities we serve." We're responsible for cultivating…
Foster economic growth and improved quality of life in the st. louis area by producing events, enhancing its national and international image as a premier sports region, and increasing community awareness of the value of sports.
Avila university, a catholic university sponsored by saint joseph educational ministries, a ministerial public juridic person of the catholic church (sjem), is a values-based community of learning providing liberal arts, professional,…
Jewish federation of st. louis mobilizes the jewish community and its human and financial resources to preserve and enhance jewish life in st. louis, in israel and around the world.
Engage actively and continuously in medical research, education and training in the practice of medicine in conjunction with the department of family medicine of the indiana university school of medicine and indiana university…
The mission of the foundation is to improve the health and well-being of the communities served by jefferson hospital through engagement, community-driven research and grantmaking. there are three grantmaking priorities focused on the…
Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit and Catholic institution of higher education, welcomes students of diverse backgrounds and prepares them to lead meaningful lives with and for others; to pursue truth, wisdom, and virtue; and to work…
The st. louis jewish light is a non-profit, independent news source whose mission is to inform, inspire, educate, and connect the st. louis jewish community.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Youthbridge Community Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Max Hay Foundation. 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 41 years old; the field is 20. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 20% startups (under 5 years old) — 1% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% 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.
74 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. 74 of the 114 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 CARDINAL GLENNON CHILDREN'S FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds STAGES ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BOARD OF TRUSTEES ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds THE FOUNDATION FOR BARNES-JEWISH HOSPITAL ↗
- Who funds MUNICIPAL THEATRE ASSOCIATION OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds ROMAN CATHOLIC FOUNDATION OF EASTERN MISSOURI ↗
- Who funds RUNG FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds UNLIMITED PLAY INC ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI BAPTIST HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds SAINT LOUIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ↗
- Who funds TEAM ACTIVITIES FOR SPECIAL KIDS INC ↗
- Who funds WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LIFE TEEN INC ↗
- Who funds ST LOUIS ART MUSEUM FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds The Joshua Chamberlain Society ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI RIGHT TO LIFE ↗
- Who funds HUMANE SOCIETY OF MISSOURI ↗
- Who funds GATEWAY ARCH PARK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds FRIENDS OF KIDS WITH CANCER ↗
- Who funds THE BACKSTOPPERS INC FKA POLICEMEN & FIREMEN FUND OF ST LOUIS ↗
- Who funds MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds DONALD DANFORTH PLANT SCIENCE CENTER ↗
- Who funds The Ranken-Jordan Home For Convalescent Crippled Children ↗
- Who funds OUR LITTLE HAVEN ↗
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: St Louis Community Foundation Inc · World Wide Technology Foundation · Roman Catholic Foundation of Eastern Missouri · St Louis Community Foundation · Youthbridge Community Foundation · Commerce Bancshares Foundation · Edward Jones Foundation · United Way of Greater St Louis Inc · Moneta Group Charitable Foundation · Jordan Mary R & Ettie a Charitable · Employees Community Fund of the Boeing Company · Enterprise Bank & Trust 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 Ross Family 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.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to Ross Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Ross Family 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.