· Private foundation
Sandstone 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 $10k21 grants · $54k
- $10k–50k5 grants · $144k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| POSITIVE EDUCATION PROGRAM | $37,516 |
| UCLA FOUNDATION | $31,500 |
| THE BAIL PROJECT | $30,000 |
| A PLACE FOR ME | $25,000 |
| ACLU OF OHIO | $20,000 |
| MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART (MOCA) | $7,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $7,500 |
| SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME | $7,500 |
| THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION | $5,000 |
| CLEVELAND PLAYHOUSE | $5,000 |
| THE OLD GLOBE | $3,000 |
| LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE | $3,000 |
| PLAYHOUSE SQUARE | $3,000 |
| BORDERLIGHT | $2,557 |
| GREATER CLEVELAND FOODBANK | $2,073 |
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, $30k) land where the poverty rate runs at 16%, against an area that typically sits at 10%. 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.
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 +28% since the first grant, against +10% for the ones you funded once.
37 repeat relationships — 14 still active in FY2025, 23 since wound down; 10 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, 65% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $57k 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
- HBHATHAWAY BROWN SCHOOL2× · 2018–2019 · $125k · revenue +1%
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY6× · 2017–2024 · $46k · revenue +50%- LELAKE ERIE INK5× · 2017–2022 · $42k · revenue +99%
Funded once
- CCCARLETON COLLEGEgraduatedone grant, 2017 · $30k · revenue +39%
- CHCHN HOUSING PARTNERSone grant, 2022 · $25k · revenue -41%
- YMYOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELANDone grant, 2017 · $25k · revenue +15%
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.
Cincinnati museum center inspires people of all ages to learn more about our world through science, regional history, and educational, engaging and meaningful experiences.
Central indiana corporate partnership (cicp) is an alliance of indiana's business and research university leaders coming together to foster long-term prosperity for the region. cicp's mission is to transform the economy of indiana in order…
Provides innovative education in a dynamic urban setting. dedicated to academic excellence and community engagement,we prepare students of diverse backgrounds with the knowledge, skill,and experience to lead meaningful lives as informed…
Global cleveland is dedicated to growing northeast ohio's economy by welcoming and connecting international people to opportunities and fostering a more inviting community for those seeking a place to call home.
Diabetes partnership of cleveland works to provide relevant and sustainable programming, education, resources and supplies to the community in northeast ohio affected by diabetes.
Cal champions creative learning, drives educational innovation, and transforms lives through collaborative efforts involving teaching artists, students, educators, and communities.
The University of New Haven is a student-centered comprehensive university with an emphasis on excellence in liberal arts and professional education. Our mission is to prepare our students to lead purposeful and fulfilling lives in a…
The ohio state bar association (the "association") is an unincorporated voluntary non-profit organization. the association was formed to promote justice and advance the interests of the legal profession.
See schedule othe democracy collaborative was established in 2000 to advance understanding of democracy for the 21st century and to promote emerging strategies and innovations in community development that enhance democratic life. in…
The university's goal in the coming decade is to advance learning through the integration of teaching, research and service to others. the core of this goal is to prepare graduates to engage with the world and lead lives of meaning. to do…
To harness the collective expertise of ohio's ceos to advocate for policies that improve ohio's economic competitiveness.
The cleveland institute of music's mission is to empower the world's most talented classical music students to fulfill their dreams and potential.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Cleveland Foundation and the most unlike its peers is Recreation Project. 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 42 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 11% 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.
55 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. 55 of the 87 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 POSITIVE EDUCATION PROGRAM ↗
- Who funds THE BAIL PROJECT INC ↗
- Who funds HATHAWAY BROWN SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds HIGH MOUNTAIN INSTITUTE INC ↗
- Who funds UCLA FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ↗
- Who funds LAKE ERIE INK ↗
- Who funds Equality Ohio ↗
- Who funds Equality Ohio Education Fund ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF OHIO FOUNDATION INC ↗
- Who funds CARLETON COLLEGE ↗
- Who funds THE CLEVELAND FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds CHN HOUSING PARTNERS ↗
- Who funds YOUNG MENS CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds THEATER & ARTS FOUNDATION OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY DBA LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE ↗
- Who funds THE CITY CLUB OF CLEVELAND ↗
- Who funds PHILANTHROPY OHIO ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND PUBLIC THEATRE INC ↗
- Who funds TEEN CANCER AMERICA INC ↗
- Who funds EDWINS LEADERSHIP & RESTAURANT INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds THE COLLABORATIVE TO END HUMAN TRAFFICKING ↗
- Who funds JOURNEY CENTER FOR SAFETY AND HEALING ↗
- Who funds CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY ↗
- Who funds BELIEVE IN DREAMS ↗
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 George Gund Foundation · The Cleveland Foundation · The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation · The Abington Foundation · The Reinberger Foundation · The Nord Family Foundation · Higley Fund of the Cleveland Foundation · Mt Sinai Health Care Foundation · The Lozick Family Foundation · Jewish Federation of Cleveland · George Codrington Fdnhirtlena · John P Murphy 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 Sandstone 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 Sandstone Foundation?
Find your warmest path to Sandstone 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.